Layman Scripts
by Pseudinymous
Summary: Danny Fenton is in a coma. It was Jazz's turn to guard the portal, but she'd failed. She'd let a ghost through, based on nothing other than the heartfelt feeling that the ghost was being sincere. So what is she doing considering letting a second one through? Her compassion might well give her the first lead she's seen in over two years, but it's also going to cause some problems...
1. A Dangerous Partnership

**Author's Note:  
><strong>Am I a little bit obsessed with the Ghostwriter? Maybe… shut up, he's cool even if he doesn't get that much attention. ;P

Anyway, this floated around in my head for a bit while I was studying for my exams, and I decided to get it down in my free moments. This is MUCH less cracky than some other non-fanfic things that I'm writing at the moment. You can expect this to be fairly serious, but I'm also aiming for light-hearted as well. How could a story that features Jazz and the GW as main characters not be just a _little _light-hearted, anyway?

As usual, PP never happened. Criticism is welcome, I'm 20 guys, I think I can handle it. :P Not sure if I will romantically pair anyone up, but at the same time I'm Not Saying No.

**The Usual Blanket Disclaimer that Probably Would Not Stop a Real Lawyer:  
><strong>I do not own Danny Phantom or any related characters.

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><p><strong>Layman Scripts<br>**A fanfic by Pseudinymous

~ **1** ~  
><em>- A Dangerous Partnership<em> -

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><p>The Ghostwriter knew it wasn't a good idea.<p>

There were traps, said the whisperings. Terrible things would happen to those unable to defend themselves, and those who were? Even they came back nursing their wounds, howling at their failures. Mind you, most ghosts capable of defending themselves were also seeking death and destruction. The Ghostwriter sought none of that; he just wanted to visit.

But he'd left all of this too long. If he'd wanted to visit earth, he should have done it two years ago, when the city that portal came out in wasn't laden with painful traps and terrible consequences. When the ghost hunters were mere bumbling fools. But no! He _had _to have the urge now, when it was treacherous and when the stakes were so high.

Being stuck in a library for so long could do that to you, though. Surrounded by fictitious works of both your own and others' creation just isn't enough; a need to see things in the flesh, to be your own story… that seeps its way into your mind as well. And the Ghostwriter knew this better than just about anyone else he could think of; you sat there, being your little introverted self, having fun every day with the things you created and ignoring reality at every point – sometimes even rewriting it a bit to suit your needs. It was a joyful life… but _it wasn't really a life_. In more ways than one.

The part of him that knew that this wasn't truly living was the one urging him to take that step out into the open, into the Old New World. It wasn't dangerous to what he used to be, but _very _dangerous to what he was now.

The portal was before him. He could make this venture whenever he wanted, but he could also turn around and go home. Both were viable. Both had reasoning. But some parts of that reasoning were more rational than others.

He didn't close his eyes, and he flew through.

The writer was confronted with a sea of ectoplasmic ooze, but certainly not in the same way the Ghost Zone radiated its strange energy. This ectoplasm was refined, different, experimented upon. All of this also wasn't particularly surprising when one realised this was Jack and Madeline Fenton's basement, but nevertheless it made the Ghostwriter's blood run cold… if by blood you meant ectoplasm, and by cold you meant _freeze_.

The alarm didn't go off immediately, so he assumed he was here on a lucky day; obviously it'd been turned off. Without the blinding lights or blaring alarms he took his time, invisibly, and absorbed the place. In its own way it was a source of inspiration, unlike what he'd ever seen in person before. Every part of it was worth observation. In the absence of any apparent threat, the Ghostwriter peered in draws, opened up cabinets, and inspected some things that he felt wise to _never, ever_ touch. He looked up and down and sideways and then he turned around and-

"Th-that's an ecto-gun barrel…" he stammered, staring into the glowing metallic abyss. The person behind it shoved the end into his nose, knocking the ghost's glasses into a position quite askew. "Uhh… oh, oh God."

"You seem awfully scared for a _ghost_," said the person behind that awful contraption. Flowing red hair could be seen on either side of the gun, and just above it a woman's face twisted into anger. "Didn't think I could see you while you were invisible, huh? Someone hasn't kept up with the times."

"H-how?" the Ghostwriter managed, mind whirring into defence mode. Defence mode consisted entirely of _how can I escape_, and wasn't particularly helpful when that gun would likely go off at the smallest sign of a wrong movement. "Look, I just wanted to have a look around, I'm not here to cause problems!" he began protesting, which seemed like the only reasonable option. "Can't we- how about we just talk about this for a second, okay? _Without_ the gun?"

The girl, whom the Ghostwriter suddenly recognised as a much older-looking Jasmine Fenton to what he remembered, did not lower her weapon. "The gun stays," she declared, making no attempt to clear up how she could see the invisible plane, "And you're going right back into the Ghost Zone."

"But… I just wanted to have a look at the Real World," the Ghostwriter managed. "It's been years. Surely you're not going to begrudge me that, child?"

"You're a ghost," she said firmly, robotically. "I can't let you through."

There it was. An uncertainty. A crack in her hardened exterior. The Ghostwriter pounced on it like a cat on a cornered mouse. "Do you really believe I'm inherently evil? That all ghosts seek to destroy?"

Jazz remained silent.

"… I don't want to hurt you. I don't want you to hurt me, either. Maybe I am a ghost, but I'm still just a _person_."

It was working. _Somehow_, he'd managed to get through to her just a little bit. Not completely, though, because although the gun had been removed from his face and that look of pure hatred had dissipated into honest insecurity, the ecto-gun remained pointed squarely at him.

"I let a ghost through once," Jazz began. "She told me that she just wanted to see the sun set."

This time the Ghostwriter remained very, very silent. He didn't like where this was going.

"When I stopped pointing this gun at her, she broke both of my arms, put my brother in a coma, and disappeared."

The Ghostwriter's mind felt like it had jammed in position. He knew the family well, both through his poem and the rumblings of the ghosts that lived around him. Jazz Fenton had only one brother – the infamous Danny Phantom – and when the Ghostwriter thought about it, he hadn't seen or heard of the boy in a _very _long time.

"… The Phantom boy is in a coma?" he hazarded, carefully avoiding the topic of what had put him there. "I never knew. I just assumed I'd shut myself in too long to hear about him."

"Shut yourself in?"

"I read and write too much. As a consequence I very rarely have need to venture outside," he sighed. "I was hoping to get away with it. When you've been in the same place all alone for that long-"

"-Sometimes you just have to get outside…" Jazz finished, before lowering an eyebrow. "I've never heard of a ghost that just reads and writes books."

"You're looking at one. We're not all barbarians, you know! Your brother certainly wasn't, was he?"

Defensive mode leapt to the rescue. "Of course he wasn't!" Jazz rallied. "He was a good person, and he didn't deserve what he got for it! He protected _all _of us!"

The Ghostwriter decided to leave the silence right where it was. This was an old tactic he'd learnt from reading far too many novels; if one person is silent for too long, the other will often just start trying to fill it all up, as if a vacuum was taking words right out of their mouths.

"_Why_ should I trust you over any other ghost I've caught?" she questioned, right on queue.

Leeway. Not particularly good leeway, mind you – it was the type of leeway that challenged one to prove something impossible, and he was fairly sure that Jazz was aware of that. Somewhat defeated, the Ghostwriter drooped mid-air. "I can't prove that to you; it's impossible to guarantee my intentions, short of you finding some way to read my mind."

More silence. Jazz stirred uncomfortably.

"What if… we made an agreement?"

"An agreement?"

"Go back in there and bring back a book you've written. After that, you'll let me tag you with a satellite tracker so I can come and hunt you down if you're lying to me."

The Ghostwriter looked into the girl's eyes in such a way that suggested he didn't quite believe her, that in her current state of mind getting off with just this seemed too good to be true. In fact it probably was, as that ecto-gun was still primed and ready to cause some pretty severe, painful damage; he was going to put his bets on the idea that there'd be some hidden clauses to this shaky agreement. But the world outside… the writer realised that after all these years, he'd give quite a lot to see it.

"I'll be back in a few minutes."

"Go." Jazz commanded, training that ecto-gun on him all the way back into the portal, until he was gone. The Ghostwriter, hardly able to believe what was happening, flew back home as fast as he could.

Jazz, on the other hand, could hardly believe what was happening either. What on earth was she _doing_, giving a ghost a pass with just a satellite tag? Her parents would be entirely against it. Even _she_ was entirely against it, to a certain extent. No, she didn't believe all ghosts were inherently evil, but at the same time, every one that she'd ever seen had at least enough power to do some damage to the city or its people. Why was this ghost who looked like a wireframe wrapped up in a coat and glasses any different? The only way complete safety could be guaranteed was if the Ghost Zone was entirely quarantined from the Real World….

But there was something about him that seemed a lot more… docile than other ghosts. Even though that one other female ghost she'd let through had seemed docile at the time, somehow this one felt a lot more sincere, trustworthy. Was that a potentially dangerous trait she should look out for when guarding the portal?

Jazz had never felt so confused about herself in her life.

Uselessly, she looked at the ecto-gun she was supposed to be protecting the city with. With the Fenton Portal Genetic Lock near-permanently damaged, guarding the place in shifts was all she and her parents could manage, and was a duty well-supported by those living in Amity Park. Ironically, the ghost attacks had died down a lot since Danny had been defeated and left in a coma, as if most of them were simply coming through to get back at him.

"This is such a mess." Jazz scowled, more at herself than anyone else. "I should have just told him never to come back."

She put the ecto-gun on the table. Her thoughts zoomed back to Danny, who still lay lifelessly in a bed in the Amity Park General Hospital, with no sign whatsoever of waking up. None of the doctors could determine why he was in a coma. A few kept suggesting a knock to the head, but couldn't find a shred of evidence for the trauma. Fenton gadgets had even stopped 'malfunctioning' around him, too; it was like he'd taken a trip through the Fenton Ghost Catcher and his ghost half had taken all of his consciousness with it, spirited away somewhere by that awful, filthy _liar _of a ghost. How she'd done it, Jazz would never know.

And after all of this, Danny's secret still lay with her, Sam and Tucker, who mutually agreed not to tell his parents. In any case, they had very little proof – with his ghost half seeming to have completely disappeared, there was no definitive way for them to show Maddie and Jack who he was. Circumstantial evidence wouldn't hold. The idea that anyone could be half-ghost was just too far-fetched to hold any water without proof staring one right in the eyes.

It was times like now that she _really _needed Danny back. Her little brother understood more about ghosts than she or her parents ever would.

… And suddenly, it dawned on her.

Ghosts would always know a whole lot more about how _their _world and _their _physics worked, simply because that's what they existed with. If a nonviolent ghost that wrote his days away could exist, then why couldn't a philosopher ghost? A mathematician? Physicists, scientists, _thinkers_. They all died at some point, didn't they? Hell, even former ghost hunters…

The writer, she could _use _him. Even if he didn't know what to do or what had happened to Danny, even if he was a self-declared shut-in, thinkers tended to know other thinkers. It was like Nikola Tesla and Mark Twain. Perhaps it was a lead. A dangerous, perilous lead. Jazz handled the ecto-gun once more, putting the safety on and thumbing the trigger thoughtfully. How far was she willing to go with this? How much _could _she trust this ghost? Trust, after all, takes years to create and just seconds to destroy…

Jazz screwed up her eyes and told herself "The tracking device will be sufficient.".

"Sufficient for what?"

Startled, the girl's head snapped to attention. The ghost had returned, clutching a leather-bound untitled book within his cold, grey hands. He was looking amiably at her – much more friendly, it seemed, when he wasn't being threatened at gunpoint. Jazz decided to put the gun down on the table… after all, trust went two ways, didn't it?

_Oh, these are dangerous waters you're getting into._ Jazz's mind warned. She chose to ignore that warning.

"Well, sufficient to… keep you in line. In case you try anything sneaky," said Jazz, awkwardly. "Aghr, I'm sorry for putting you through all of this, but so many ghosts attack us that it's almost impossible to determine good from bad anymore! I hate it. My parents think all of you are here to destroy everything but I _know _that's not true. I've seen ghosts display conscience and morals and all sorts of things that mum and dad refuse to accept. It's all fear, and it's _not fair_. I feel so awful about it. I've probably turned around and even attacked so many of the good guys, it's terrible…"

The Ghostwriter was utterly taken aback – on the other hand, he now understood a _lot _more about why the girl was going to let him pass at all. She was doomed to a guilty conscience no matter what she did; either by not properly defending the city, or by refusing entry to those like him, who wanted nothing more than peace and would actively defend it, if necessary. Or at least, they would hide from the fighting, which made them no worse than most of the citizens anyway.

She looked like she had something else to say. He locked eyes with her, and waited.

"I-I need to ask something else of you," said Jazz, looking a little sick. "I'll let you through if you help me get my brother back!"

It was a need so great that it could completely transcend just about any negotiation; a sister's love for her brother and her desperation to see him conscious again. She'd give up a _lot_ just for the chance of seeing that, and it would be an opportunity to earn her trust unlike any other. Sometimes stories began with requests like these, the writer mused…

… On the other hand, it wasn't the easiest of requests.

"I'll help if I can," said the writer. "But I'll be honest, I haven't the faintest clue on how to bring someone out of a coma. If my keyboard was working properly, maybe, but it's not functioning the way it's supposed to at the moment."

"Your keyboard?"

The Ghostwriter stopped himself in his tracks, and thought about what he was going to say. "Err… it's a special artefact. As for what it's supposed to do… let's talk about that another time, okay?"

"I'd like to talk about it now," said Jazz, unforgivingly. The writer sagged a little, and looked away.

"Don't get me wrong, I don'tuse it in a dangerous way."

Jazz's expression worsened.

"I use it to fix things, sometimes make things a bit more interesting. … Sometimes to teach certain individuals a lesson or two…"

"… But what does it _do_?" Jazz insisted. The Ghostwriter gave up.

"It combines with my power to rewrite aspects of reality," he sighed. "I know that sounds incredibly dangerous."

Her expression was unreadable again – at least to the writer, anyway, who had interacted with precious few people even in his living days – and she seemed to freeze where she sat. As a result he had little idea of how, exactly, one was supposed to handle people who were reacting like this, either. A few possibilities popped into his mind, but none of them were particularly preferable or even remotely appropriate. If they were both characters in a story he was writing, everything would have been _fine, _he'd have known exactly what to do! But unfortunately, this was real life and he knew little of what to do. So he decided just to pretend he didn't notice her discomfort and skipped ahead.

"You said you wanted to put some sort of tracker on me?"

"O-Oh, yes, I did," said Jazz, standing up quite suddenly. "Err… it might hurt a bit. It wasn't exactly designed with total comfort in mind."

The Ghostwriter nodded reluctantly. After Walker's hellhole of a prison, he could deal with pain. The prison visit, however, was something he'd really prefer to keep out of the discussion.

Jazz circled around him and came to a central table, where a much less lethal-looking weapon sat. On the outside it appeared to be a modified dart gun; obviously it stored some sort of technological tracking darts, although the writer would freely admit that he hadn't seen much technology other than his keyboard and what Technus occasionally carted past the library. Hesitantly, the ghost hunter's daughter picked it up. "You ready for this?"

The Ghostwriter nodded, and put the book he had brought with him down where the modified dart gun had previously lay. "Yes, just try to pick a spot without so many nerves."

"An arm will do," Jazz declared, brandishing the gun carefully. "Clench your teeth! … And please try not to scream."


	2. Leeway

**Author's Note:  
><strong>You know what's really annoying? The awkward way that FFN likes to randomly delete spaces between words sometimes. It's always fun trying to find them, because I never seem to be able to until after the darn thing is posted. *sighs*

My exams are over, yee! So more chapters for the tiny little following this story has. But you know what? That's okay. I'm enjoying it. Also, this felt like it took a really long time to write. Probably because it ended up needing a very different second draft as well as a pretty severe edit (due to the original chapter being written when I was so sleep deprived that I'm not actually sure I was a functional human being at the time). But, it's all good now!

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><p><strong>Layman Scripts<br>**A fanfic by Pseudinymous

~ **2** ~  
>- <em>Leeway <em>-

* * *

><p>His eyes streamed, and his face burned. <em>That<em> was painful beyond _description_. Not even Walker's guards seemed able to inflict anything that even came close.

"I'm so sorry!" Jazz pleased, "Something went a little wrong when I was inserting it, I don't think the dart gun's been used in forever! It's not really supposed to be that bad, I'm so, _so _sorry!"

Lower jaw wobbling slightly, all the Ghostwriter could manage was a very strained "_It's okay…_", although he honestly felt more like asking the girl to saw his arm off after such grievous bodily harm, as it might very well have lessened the agony he was in. It'd been the smallest dart, too; really it should have been a piece of cake, like having a simple injection, but it was so far from it that it had taken the writer completely unawares and crippled him like a punch to the gut. The pain didn't end after the dart had successfully inserted the tracker underneath his skin, either; it _throbbed_, and had decided that it would continue to throb with untold veracity.

Jazz put the dart gun down with an amount trepidation, as if the safety might randomly flick off and take out one of the basement walls. Then she quickly looked around, located a likely-looking draw, and dug out the device's receiver from the endless abyss. The Ghostwriter peered over it sceptically.

"You know, the Ghost Zone is bottomless but I think that might just go down further."

"Mum and dad's organisation skills do leave a bit to be desired," sighed Jazz, booting the device up. "O-oh. It's asking for a name. … What _is _your name, anyway?"

"All of the other ghosts just call me the Ghostwriter," he replied, still clutching his arm in the hope that it might become slightly more bearable. Jazz didn't seem entirely convinced.

"I meant your _real _name. You must've had one, once."

The Ghostwriter thought about this for a moment. "Well _yes_, just about everyone has a real name stashed away somewhere, but heavens child I haven't gone by it since I was twelve! Even my parents eventually just started calling me Writer. You might as well, if you want to call me anything."

"It's not really a _name_…" Jazz insisted.

"It's still a noun," said the writer, indignantly. "Isn't that close enough for you?"

Jazz crossed her arms, shutting the draw with a _hmph_. "Well, what's wrong with your real name?"

A few bad memories passed through the writer's head. "Let's not even _begin _with what was wrong with it."

The girl appeared to be deciding between two very valid points, tapping her fingers on her face in thought. Had the Ghostwriter known anything about Jazz's history with psychology and psychoanalysis, he'd have realised that she was pondering about whether it was better to psychoanalyse him now while she had him here, or whether she should leave it until later when she'd gained more of his trust. Alas, he was ignorant of this fact, and merely stared a little blankly at her, waiting for the girl to make some sort of next move. She didn't, and suddenly he felt an overwhelming urge to avoid eye-contact.

Jazz had meanwhile mentally crossed over to a different topic, and had resumed her original seat at the side of the room. "… Look," she began. "If you're going to helping me investigate this, it might be better for both of us if you were a little more… _human_."

This brought his attention right back to Jazz, expression somewhere between surprised and flabbergasted. "And _how_, exactly, do you expect me to achieve that?" the writer scoffed. "I'm not your brother. I don't have a human half. I can't just _change back_ whenever I feel like it! I'm-"

"-stuck like that, I know." Jazz finished. She had an annoying habit of completing other people's sentences, he noticed. "I'm talking about a device though, that we used to use with Danny."

The Ghostwriter leant forward mid-air, intrigued. "Oh? Will this be as painful as the last one?"

"No! … No." Jazz confirmed. "It's just a wristband, Danny's friend Tucker and I… we made it for him together using some of my parents' technology. Originally it was just meant to hide him from all the detectors, but there was a bit of a side-effect that stopped him from glowing when he was in ghost form."

"It… really?"

"Completely." Jazz confirmed, trying to look as confident as possible when the only entity that had ever tested it was a bit too unique for generalised use. "And, well… it's not like he has much need for it at the moment, anyway."

The Ghostwriter thought about this as he straightened his glasses – still crooked, he realised, from when the girl had been shoving an ecto-gun in his face. It was an odd opportunity, certainly one he hadn't expected to run into out here. But _still _problems remained, and he grimaced when he realised that just because it got rid of the ghostly glow, didn't mean it would be fixing his skin tone. The pointed ears and teeth could be hidden effectively enough, if he made an effort to comb his hair so it sat the right way and perhaps if he tried speaking as little as possible, but you couldn't just change your whole _complexion_.

"I assume the goal is to allow me to walk around outside without having to be invisible. I'm not exactly sure I'm going to look human enough for that…"

"Just say you have argyria." Jazz explained, thoughtfully. "I read about it once, it causes your skin to turn grey or blue. It's caused by excessive silver consumption, and other than that it's kinda harmless."

What use he would ever have had for consuming silver, the writer really didn't know. On the other hand, it seemed like as good an excuse as any… so long as he didn't get too far into the implications of how the silver had gotten into his body in the first place.

"So… that's a yes?" Jazz hesitated. Eventually, distractedly, the writer nodded. "Hey… do you hear that?"

"Hear wha-" said the Ghostwriter, but upon actually using his ears, he realised. "Someone's upstairs?"

Jazz's face went from honest thought to creeping horror. "Mum must be home early!" she cried, leaping out of her chair and quickly moving to dive through her handbag, which the writer hadn't noticed sitting next to her chair. And then she hissed, "Writer, fix up your hair!"

Little time was wasted. He could hear the footsteps on their approach to the basement, and as he warily looked over Jazz's ailing progress at finding the device, wondered whether he should just disappear and take his chances outside, instead.

"Hi sweety!" called Madeline Fenton cheerfully, thankfully from the blind spot at the top of the basement stairs. "Did you turn anything back today?"

"Just the Box Ghost again, mum!" Jazz called back, finally having dug out the object of interest. She hurled it at her inadvisable companion so quickly and without warning that it hit him in the face, although thankfully he caught it before it had chance to fall to the ground. It was working, and they were safe.

Or, as Jazz quickly realised, not quite _entirely _safe. "_Writer_!" she growled. "_Use your feet_!"

The Ghostwriter wasn't sure if he'd been seen, and nonetheless felt a bit ashamed for forgetting that perhaps _not_ floating in the air would allow him to pass for human _much _more easily. As he looked warily over into the ghost hunter's eyes, he dreaded the surprised look on her face.

"Oh!" said Maddie. And, with a statement that saw the writer visibly deflate with relief, she continued "Jazz, who is this? What's he doing in our lab?"

"A friend!" said Jazz, more quickly than she thought she could speak. "His name is…" _thinking, thinking…_ "John."

The ghost shot her a stare that suggested that, if anything in the world, his name most _definitely _wouldn't be John. Maddie looked him up and down and then back up again, her eyes eventually resting on his. More than anything else, she seemed concerned. "Are you _feeling _all right?" she queried. "Your complexion's terrible."

"I'm fine," replied the writer stiffly. "It's a medical condition. _Everyone _asks, I'm afraid."

"Oh," said Maddie, apparently a little incredulous. "So… you'll be okay then? You're as pale as-"

"-a ghost, I know. That's what I keep getting told," the Ghostwriter sighed, stone-faced but suppressing the eye-roll. "Fortunately it only affects my skin."

Maddie tilted her head. "What's it called?"

"Argyria." Jazz cut in, quickly. "Mum, come on! He's a guest, not a science project! It can be really psychologically damaging for a person to be constantly questioned on a condition like this."

A moment of blankness passed over Maddie's face, followed by a brief look of embarrassment. "Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot my manners." she excused herself, coughing slightly. "John, dear, would you like to come upstairs and have some tea?"

The Ghostwriter froze. "Um… I'll come upstairs, but no tea thank-you. I'm not a fan."

"How about a cup of coffee then?" Maddie suggested. "Or a glass of lemonade? Water?"

"N-no, really, I'm completely fine," the ghost urged back. "I drank quite a bit back at… my house. Before I left."

Maddie frowned. "Oh, okay. Well, if I can get you anything at some point, all you need to do is ask, okay?"

"… Absolutely," he nodded back, trying his best not to give away just how internally tortured he was over the situation. "Thank-you kindly… Maddie, was it?"

"That's the name!" Maddie smiled, and then beckoned the writer and her daughter upstairs. "Come on, we'll all sit down for a bit."

The Ghostwriter barely knew what to do with himself. He'd come to this place with a very simple objective, which consisted almost entirely of _get outside, have a look around for a few days, and don't get shot_. And now that had evolved into being indoctrinated into figuring out how to cure a serious medical condition, as well as masquerading as a normal human being and pretending to be the good friend of a ghost hunter's daughter. At no point could you really say that any one of those ideas were safe ones, with the exception of the masquerading part. That, he realised, could very well save his neck.

Worse still was the idea, however, that he might be discovered in a ghost hunter's very own home if Maddie kept on offering food or drink. Snacks or meals of any kind were a difficult thing to accept when you were incapable of consuming them, no matter how delicious they sounded.

The pair followed the mother up the stars, where Maddie found herself an adequate but not extravagantly comfortable seat in the middle of the lounge. An ominous bag of shopping still remained on the coffee table, and she pointed to it in that forcefully caring way that mothers tended to. "Do you want some cookies, John? I've just been shopping, so I have plenty."

Inevitably the answer was no.

Jazz sat nearer her mother, and the Ghostwriter decided against sitting down at all and just stood. Perhaps that would indicate that he didn't really have the time to stay, he wondered. It didn't seem to be on anyone's mind, however, as Maddie was giving him a serious look that had nothing to do with 'you should go home now'. She rested those eyes on him for a few moments, before shooting her own daughter an even harsher stare.

"I'd be correct In assuming there's _nothing _going on between the two of you, right?"

Jazz made an unmistakable choking sound and turned bright red. "You're joking, aren't you? John's in his thirties!"

"… _Something_ like that," the Ghostwriter muttered in response, with more than few hints of irritation. "We met at the library a few weeks ago, _I_ was just curious to see your laboratory."

Gradually, the woman's heightened sense of over-protectiveness went down. "Oh…" she sighed. "Well, as long as that's all it is, then that's okay then." And then she perked up a bit as soon as she realised her visitor was interested in her very specific line of work. "So, do you want to learn about ghosts? You're certainly in the right place."

The writer covered a tiny smirk. "Mm, I already know a bit," he replied, meaningfully. "I just wanted the tour, and then I was going to be off. Maybe I'll come back one day and listen, though?"

Maddie was grinning a little madly. "That would be wonderful! It's pretty rare to see people who are actually curious rather than, well, just plain terrified. You sound like you've had a few contact points with ghosts already?"

"A few," he admitted. Jazz had started biting her nails.

"So you fight ghosts, then?" Maddie quizzed, so excited she looked ready to jump out of her seat. "Often?"

The Ghostwriter nearly choked, himself. "Definitely not, that's far too dangerous! I just observe as a bystander."

"Oh…" said Maddie, visibly deflating. "My husband Jack and I… we prefer a more _action-oriented _approach. We have to, what with all the ghosts that come here to attack the city. If their nature wasn't so violent it might have been different, but there's not much we can do."

"I don't think they're _all_ violent," the Ghostwriter hazarded. Maddie raised her brow, and Jazz had done a very good job of burying her head into her hands.

"I've never seen a ghost out here who isn't. The ghosts that escape from our portal? No conscience. No mercy. And so bizarrely obsessed with something that whatever shred of humanity they had left appears to have entirely disappeared. Truth be told I'm not even sure a ghost is even the same person anymore. It's like an entirely different entity, twisted and driven by ugly, hateful emotions."

The most awkward silence any of them had ever experienced passed over the room, and the Ghostwriter had to beat down every indignant urge he had to go back to the Ghost Zone and tell Technus to hurry up with fixing the keyboard.

"I don't think they're all conscienceless monsters." Jazz pitched in, with an encouraging smile towards her guest. "Maybe… maybe all of the ghosts that have real reason to come through our portal are those that seek to cause harm. I don't think we've studied them enough to conclusively say that _none_ of them have a conscience."

"Jazz, honey…" Maddie began. "I know you liked Phantom when he was around, but he was a dangerous ghost. Frankly the city's better off without him, and now that he's gone the ghost attacks have practically halved."

"But he was a _good person_. At least he had intentions to protect everyone in this town!" Jazz urged. Maddie rolled her eyes.

"This again? He wasn't a person, dear. He was a ghost. End of discussion."

With the tension in the air thickening faster than anyone could control and the writer feeling he wouldn't be able to handle his temper much longer, he decided that perhaps now would be the best time to excuse himself. "Well, I should probably get home and… feed the cat or something," he muttered, wishing just a little bit that he owned a cat in the first place. "I hope you both have a good night."

"Wait!" Jazz cut in, before the writer even had a chance to turn and face the door. "Mum, can you finish my shift? You can finish early too, and I'll take over until Dad's on."

"Well, it is only an hour…" Maddie mused. "Sure. Don't the two of you get up to any trouble though, okay?"

"I never get up to trouble," said Jazz, without the usual amount of certainty. "I'll see you later."

"Bye, sweety," said Maddie, as her daughter and 'John' stood and headed towards the door. "Don't stay out too late, you need your sleep so you can get up in the morning."

"I won't!" called Jazz, out the door. The Ghostwriter followed, and breathed an incredibly deep sigh of relief as soon as the door was shut. Relief, however, quickly turned into indignation.

"John? Did you really have to make my name _John_?"

Jazz was beginning to turn redder than she'd been in front of her accusatory mother. "Well, you didn't give me a real name! It was the first decent-sounding real name I could think of!"

The Ghostwriter steamed a little. "Yes, but _John_? What are you going to tell her next, that my last name's _Smith_? _Doe_? And I'm _definitely _not in my thirties, by the way. I'm younger than that."

Jazz scoffed. "Under what possible definition could you be _younger _than that?"

"I'm twenty-seven," claimed the writer, crossing his arms with a huff. "_Physically_, I'm twenty-seven."

"Yeah, sure." Jazz laughed. "And what are you _actually_?"

The Ghostwriter didn't reply until Jazz, amazingly, managed to stare him down. He looked away and straight at his feet. "Sixty, okay?"

Jazz had already begun walking, and the Ghostwriter followed closely behind. "I can't believe that's all."

"Really?"

"No, it's just… I assumed most ghosts are a lot older." Jazz remarked, and upon the observation of some other people walking fairly closely to them she lowered her voice. "You must be pretty young by ghost standards."

"I am," the Writer whispered back. "But with some of the stupidity you see in the Ghost Zone, you'd think I was one of the oldest ones there. Did you know the Box Ghost is 508?" Jazz stopped walking, her mouth hanging open in horror and awe. "Yeah. Case in point."

"How could anyone be obsessed with boxes for _five centuries_?!" Jazz stammered, raising her voice now that they'd finished walking past the other pedestrian. "Wouldn't he get bored?"

The ghost put his hands up in the air. "Don't ask me. _Honestly_, don't. I might have the same capacity for obsession, but… it's for something that's intricate, a craft, something that is worked upon throughout one's life and cherished. Writing is beautiful. A box is… well, it's just a box."

"It's times like now that I _really _hope the Box Ghost hasn't escaped."

"What, so I'd have to _flick _him and watch him careen into yonder sunset?" the Ghostwriter quipped. "I might be weak. But the Box Ghost is truly pathetic."

They both stopped for a moment, each half-expecting the Box Ghost to suddenly appear, scream out his shallow threats, and attempt to attack them with a barrage of boxes. That moment thankfully never came.

"… Come on. We're going to the hospital," said Jazz eventually, finally beginning to walk again. "It's only a few blocks down the road."

The Ghostwriter dearly wanted to explore, but considering this was apparently the reason he wasn't being shot at until he returned to that dreadful dimension, he decided it was perhaps best just to follow along. Curiously, he examined the sky.

… Maybe he could be contented with this, for now.

A magnificent display of magenta and yellow lit up the afternoon atmosphere, as the sun made its decent into the horizon. Part of him couldn't quite believe he was seeing it – the Ghost Zone had no version of the sun, no version of daytime, and not the slightest trace of any sort of night. But the earth _changed_, and constantly. Ghosts, of course, didn't – unless it was to adapt to a harsher environment – and that made the Ghost Zone a very bland place to spend endless stretches of eternity.

_No wonder some of them seem to have gone insane._

"You mentioned you read a lot," Jazz mentioned casually, cutting through the silence. "How many books do you have?"

"Uhh. Billions, probably," said the Ghostwriter, as if it was a number one would just casually spit out when talking about a collection. Jazz nearly had a coronary.

"_Billions_?"

"Well, I live in a library, and they all just seem to appear there of their own accord," the writer shrugged. "Someone writes something somewhere in the world, and as soon as they say it's complete, a copy of it just ends up in the archives. So if you ever want to borrow anything… trust me, I have it."

After collecting herself and trying to act as casually as possible, Jazz decided to hazard a question. "So… do you get scientific journals? Psychology textbooks?"

"Did someone write them?" the Ghostwriter queried.

"So you have all of them!" Jazz exclaimed, excitedly.

"Somewhere," said the writer, nervously running a hand through his hair as he thought about the expanse of his collection. "_Where _is the hard part. The archives go on forever. If I'm looking for something specific, though, eventually I'll find it."

Jazz quickly filed away a mental note to ask about at least fifty different psychology books she'd been meaning to read. And then a distraction – she looked up, squinting at the sun as it caught in her eyes at the end of the day, and pointed to a large building at the end of the street. "We're almost there."

* * *

><p>Jazz and the Ghostwriter neared Danny's room on the fifth floor of the hospital after a brief battle with reception, which involved convincing the bewildered nurses that the writer hadn't, indeed, come in because he was <em>asphyxiating<em>. After that little incident, the Ghostwriter was forced to regretfully concede that conversations like that were going to be a normal part of his life.

Jazz was forced to stand outside the room for a few minutes, where she breathed in a few gulps of sterile, foul-smelling hospital air in an attempt to get a good handle on her emotions. When questioned about having to deal with this for the past two years, she blew the writer off, and muttered something about the therapists sometimes being the truly broken ones. He didn't probe further.

"Are you okay, now?" he asked eventually, as she began to recover composure. "Unless you just want me to go in. I still don't know what you want me to do, though."

"I… no, we'll both go." Jazz confirmed. "I just want to see what you think."

The Ghostwriter regarded her sceptically, but didn't complain. Eventually Jazz summoned the courage to open the door to Danny's room.

What she never expected to see was someone else in there. An _invisible_ someone else, no less.

"You!" Jazz spat, fury drowning her delicate features. "You're the one who stole him! Where the _hell _is my little brother?!"

The Ghostwriter said nothing, but despite this the ghost seemed far more interested in him anyway. She flew within arm's length of the writer, so close that he recoiled backwards on instinct alone.

"Funny to see you here," she remarked. "Funny to see you like _that_. Did you manage to win the trust of dear little Jazz Fenton to get that wristband? Obviously she's just as naïve as she was back then, when I broke both of her arms."

"Demon ghost!" Jazz shrieked, finally seeing fit to draw the ecto-gun from the holster tied around her waist. "Give me back my -!" The gun disappeared without a trace, and Jazz was left standing in a position ready to shoot with empty hands. She moved her fingers slightly, as if she couldn't quite believe it was gone.

"Do you _really_ think I'm going to give you opportunity to hurt me after what I did to you?" the ghost woman queried, flicking long black locks of hair out of her eyes. And then she brought the same hand back so quickly into Jazz's face that the girl was sent careening into one of the hospital cupboards. The ghost turned to the Ghostwriter, again. "I told you she was naïve. And you, you're just pathetic. Where's your pride, looking like a human? Trying to camouflage with the native wildlife, are you? _What on earth are you thinking_?"

"I'm thinking I want to _help _her because she's a _fr_-!" was about a far as he got, before suffering the same fate as Jazz and finding himself up against a wall on the other side of the room. The enemy ghost flew up to the pair of them, finally returning to the visible world in full, and hovered there, tauntingly.

"My, my. We really are _weak_, aren't we?" she sneered. "Tell you what. I'm going to give you an address. I'm going to write it on a piece of paper -" she paused to scribble with a pen and notepad that had apparently been making their home in the deep pockets of her jacket, "- and then I'm going to give it to you. If you go there you might just get poor little Danny Phantom back!"

"It's a trap…" the Ghostwriter groaned. She smiled pleasantly in return.

"Oh honey. Of _course _it's a trap."

And then she disappeared into thin air, apparently having teleported entirely out of existence. A little yellow piece of note paper fluttered down onto Jazz's arm, brandishing the address in question.

"Writer…" Jazz managed, turning to face him. "… Why does she know you?"

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note:<br>**A couple of things that I'll clear up now:

- My interpretation of the cannon is that ghosts can see other ghosts even if they're invisible, justified by the fact that we've never really seen ghosts fight each other using invisibility on the show. The same goes for intangibility; the only time that's useful is when dealing with humans or the real world. Ghosts have never shown an ability to phase through other ghosts or objects from the Ghost Zone, for instance.

- Ghosts can age and/or change appearance, but they tend not to without severe stress, trauma or reason, e.g. Dan Phantom going crazy and destroying everything in his path. This is referencing the fact that Desiree exists all the way back into myth, and yet still appears as a reasonably-aged woman – however all of the ghosts that appeared in TUE had aged spectacularly, and looked meaner in general. I like to think of it as a form of adaption, and that they might revert if the circumstances get better.

Yes, I think about technicalities too much.

Reviews are loved. :3


	3. Witchery

**Author's Note:  
><strong>Another chapter. I sure am getting these out at a decent pace, aren't I? I've been aiming for about 3,000+ words per chapter but it appears the previous chapter I wrote far surpassed that. Ah well! It's actually been a long time since I've properly written a story longer than like, 1,000 words, and I'm trying to sink back into and be comfortable in my old style again. I think we're getting there, gradually.

I am musing about branching out into other fandoms later, but I'm just not quite sure how or what ones yet. I have a few half-baked DP ideas to flesh out before doing that, anyhow – not to mention stories I want to finish.

* * *

><p><strong>Layman Scripts<br>**A fanfic by Pseudinymous

~ **3** ~  
>- <em>Witchery -<em>

* * *

><p>A flood of people burst into the room, most of them doctors and nurses who had been on the floor at the time. While Jazz was lying up against the cabinet she'd been hurled into and displaying obvious signs of extreme pain along her back, the Ghostwriter seemed to be fairing much better. <em>Fortunate that ghosts are a lot more resistant to this sort of thing<em>, she thought absently, while a swarm of medical personnel surrounded her.

But Jazz's ability to hear or pay attention to them was gone, and her consciousness waning. Doctors were panicking at the recent ghost attack, nurses were panicking that the Ghostwriter's airways might be blocked, and the writer was panicking that someone might see fit to examine him properly.

That was the last thing she remembered before waking up in a hospital bed.

The room was light and airy, with the window wide open so that the fresh night time air could blow through, fluttering the delicate lace curtains. Obviously no one had thought to remove her contacts, because Jazz could see perfectly. She could also see what wasn't supposed to be there perfectly, too; the Ghostwriter floated invisibly with his hands held tightly behind his back, stone-faced and staring out of the window in apparent thought.

"_Hey_…" managed Jazz, quietly attempting to get his attention. When that didn't work, she raised her voice and poked his arm. This had the effect of nearly making him jump out of his own skin, although thankfully almost silently.

"Sorry, I was… somewhere else," the writer excused himself, looking down at his now-conscious company. "Are you feeling alright?"

Jazz took a moment to examine herself, noting a terrible ache in her back and neck that she'd only seemed to become aware of then. A grimace passed over her face, followed by a stare down to the floor. The unforgiving feeling of failure was swamping her mind. "She got away. I had an ecto-gun held to her head and she got away."

"She also has one of the most infuriating powers in the Ghost Zone, so don't beat yourself up too much," the Ghostwriter reasoned. "Everyone with any amount of common sense stays well away from her."

"Who is she?"

"Mirabella Spectra. Penelope Spectra's sister."

"_Spectra_?!" Jazz gasped, and then she gasped again as the sudden movement of her body sent a shiver of pain rattling up her spine. Once it had passed, she calmed down and continued, "But… they don't look anything alike."

"Ah, but neither of them use their real form. Underneath that pretty exterior they're both just shadow beings, ghosts without faces that have to create the way they look – with varying success – from the ground up."

Information raced through Jazz's mind. She knew all about Spectra, but mostly on a second-hand basis. After finally letting on that she knew Danny's secret, he'd told her about many of the ghosts he'd fought, and Spectra had gone down as one of the most despised. After hearing the stories about what she'd done, Jazz couldn't blame her little brother in the slightest; she was quite possibly the most narcissistic ghost she'd ever heard of, and misery followed wherever her vanity went. To find out that woman had a _sister_, and that that sister was responsible for stealing Danny away…

"You've probably already realised this, but her power is teleportation," the Ghostwriter went on. "In addition to that, she can also teleport anything smaller than herself… anywhere she wants. As long as it's initially within a few feet, of course."

"So _that's_ how she did it," Jazz scowled. "Wait! Don't think _you're_ getting a free pass. Why on earth did she seem to know you so well?"

The Ghostwriter crossed his arms and sighed. "Mira and I were friends once. As the fact that she threw me across the room should indicate, not anymore."

"How could you _possibly_ be friends with her?"

"_Once_!" the Ghostwriter stressed, glowering at the very idea and shaking his head. "As you grow older I'm sure you will one day learn that even though some people seem like friends in the beginning, doesn't mean they'll remain so. Things happen, circumstances change, people who receive power become drunk by it."

Jazz seemed to be pausing for a moment, thinking. "You don't seem drunk with power. And you have one of the most dangerous ones I've ever heard of."

"I like to think I'm a different person." _Well, mostly,_ the writer added mentally, thinking back to that fateful Christmas a few years ago. No need to go telling her about that, now was there? Nor was their need to tell her about numerous other incidents where he'd gotten the practice for it in the first place, although most of those boiled down to another ghost seriously ticking him off and deserving everything they got. In any case, after the jail sentence he was _really _trying to curb those anger issues. That's what mattered, right?

Jazz had closed her eyes. "I like to think you are, too."

The Fenton daughter tried to recall the incident from before clearly in her mind; it was coming through in thin slices, like tiny cross sections on an impossibly more infinite plane of existence. Yellow flashed through her brain, followed by the illusory feeling of pain and red splashed all across her vision. Jazz's head hurt slightly just thinking about it – and then there was that note, that_ yellow _note, fluttering down and landing on her leg.

_The note!_

"Where's the address she left behind?!" Jazz gasped. "We have to go and – aaghr!"

The girl collapsed back into her bed in pain, sending another wave of sharp tremors up her spine. She was too helpless to do anything about saving her little brother. And it pained her even more to realise that Danny must have been injured like this quite often, but a combination of inhuman healing speeds and an insane amount of willpower had resulted in him being able to keep going, keep saving people. But here she was, crippled in a bed, unable to summon the strength for him that he so surely would have displayed for her.

A single frustrated tear trickled down her face. Why did she have to be so _useless_?

"Calm yourself. You're in no condition to even be thinking about that note."

"I don't care what condition I'm in! He's my brother and I just don't have the _willpower_ to get out of this hospital bed!" Jazz rallied, at full volume. The Ghostwriter recoiled immediately.

"Hush, woman! Do you want this place overrun with-"

Too late.

A nurse burst into the room. She was dressed in frumpy-looking scrubs and had a haughty look on her face, staring straight at the source of the problem. "What's all this racket?!" she demanded, looking around for the conversation partner that had gotten her patient into a rage such that she would scream out to the heavens. The Ghostwriter floated there, a sardonic look on his face as he observed her from his corner, in between the cupboard and Jazz's bed.

Jazz didn't say a thing, and of course that would never satisfy the nurse. She went right up to Jazz's bedside to question her, and the Ghostwriter sunk into the corner even further, squashing himself up against the wall. But the nurse (her name was Janette, Jazz realised, as her badge got ever-closer to her face) was suddenly distracted.

"I don't know what you're squawking about, but by _God_ it's awfully cold over here!" she exclaimed, making a feeble attempt to wrap the scrubs around herself to be warmer.

Jazz wore perhaps the most innocent look on her face the world had ever known. "Is it?" she asked, looking genuinely confused.

The writer, however, had a life that had rarely been graced with such subtlety, and simply wanted the nurse out of the picture. So he looked at his hand sceptically for a moment, and then grinned wickedly as he turned it intangible and phased it straight through the top of the woman's back and raked his fingers through her neck.

She shrieked, jumped sideways and nearly fell over Jazz's bed. Not another word was said – escape was apparently the only option. The nurse left the room promptly and never returned.

"Problem solved," the Ghostwriter proclaimed, chuckling slightly. "Oh, don't look at me like that! I'm a ghost, scaring people near to death is apparently what we do. It's the Natural Order of Things."

"It wasn't necessary," Jazz glared.

He frowned at her, and sulked a little. "I was only trying to get you to laugh."

"Yeah, well great job with that," the girl huffed, and turned her neck away – however tentatively. "We have to find Danny. I'm sure, I'm _sure _she's got his ghost half stashed away somewhere and that's why he can't wake up!"

"But it's a trap," said the Ghostwriter, warily. "Jasmine, we cannot just go gallivanting into whatever that address is. I've _seen _Mira's traps, those things will honest-to-God get you _killed_. I've nearly been killed by one! Yes, _me_. And many other ghosts like me!"

"Really? But, but you can't-"

"Want a bet?" the writer ask, face coloured with all sorts of dread. "Some of the things I know would give you nightmares. You might want the willpower now to ignore your injury and go save your brother now, but if I told you everything, you'd be glad you don't have it. _I'm _glad you don't have it."

"But that makes it even worse!" Jazz sputtered. "What on earth do you think she's doing to my little brother?!"

The Ghostwriter deflated. "In any case, you're incapacitated. I overheard the doctors saying it'd be a few weeks before you even recover."

For Jazz, the world had descended into chaos. Just seeing that ghost here again, present and teasing her in such a manner – that was the worst part of it. If that had never happened, had there been absolutely no lead to follow, then she could probably have just laid in this hospital bed for however long it would take. But now that she had this lead… time, it just wasn't a luxury. A few more tears escaped, and she closed her eyes, trying her best to stem them before they really got going.

Unfortunately for all involved, a few things come from being socially stunted, and not being able to react appropriately to someone else's sadness was one of them. The writer felt positively awful seeing the girl here like this, tearing herself up. But he didn't know what to say and the only other option was totally out of the question.

… Or was it?

Pros and cons were everywhere. In fact part of him knew it was a spectacularly bad idea; for one he had no medical experience whatsoever and really didn't know how much pain this was going to cause the girl. On the other hand, she would be fixed up almost immediately and _he'd_ at least get a chance to check up with Technus about his keyboard. After all, it could be the game-changer in this whole situation, and apart from some strange and somewhat dangerous _kinks_, the keyboard was very close to working when he left.

Oh, but she was not going to like this. Not at all.

"Jasmine," hazarded the Ghostwriter, grabbing her attention. "… What if I said there was a way we could fix up your back faster. _Much _faster."

Jazz's eyes flung wide. "What are you talking about?"

"Well… there is a ghost known as the Witch Doctor. He lives in my area of the Ghost Zone and is said to be able to heal any injury in a matter of seconds – even advanced ones that ghosts can't heal quickly themselves."

"Bring him here." Jazz commanded. "Give him the wristband, tell him to-"

"It's not that easy, girl," the Ghostwriter cut in, darkly. "He absolutely refuses to come out of his den, for whatever reasons he may have. I haven't ever even _seen _him – have only heard from word of mouth, and flown past that little burrow he has. If you want to ask him to mend you, I'm going to have to take you there myself."

Panic flooded Jazz's face, turning her pale and even making her shed a few drops of sweat. "Like, inside the Ghost Zone?" she asked, voice high. "Are you serious?"

"The Ghost Zone isn't as bad as you think, you know."

"Yeah, only if you're one of the native inhabitants!" Jazz rallied. "Plus, I turned all of those ghosts away! They'll _recognise _me! Some of them probably even want me _dead_."

As reluctant as the Ghostwriter was to admit it, the girl had a very good point; ghosts were well-known for being less forgiving than they ought to be, and given that a large majority of them continued existing for a very good portion of eternity, grudges could last for centuries. On the other hand, however, it wasn't as if they were going to be inside the zone for _long_ – the Witch Doctor's den was less than a minute's flight from the portal, and on top of that many of the inhabitants knew that pissing off a ghost that could make you do whatever he wanted generally wasn't the best of ideas.

"Look…" he began. "If I'm to be honest, I'm more concerned about how your back will fare on the way; I can fly as smoothly as possible but inevitably me carrying you is not going to be ideal. But we'll be in and out of the Ghost Zone in less than ten minutes, and you'll be better."

Jazz was still pale, and now she wasn't talking.

Noises were accumulating outside the door. This wasn't particularly concerning until the same nurse that had been in there before could be heard outside, screaming "I don't _care _if you can't detect it, there's a _ghost _in there; I felt it! You're the Fentons, aren't you?! Go hunt it down!"

The Ghostwriter and Jazz exchanged looks of horror. "Oh ye gods, they got here so fast…" the Ghostwriter whispered. "Come _on_ Jasmine, _choose_!"

"I'll go!" Jazz stammered, now apparently far more concerned about her own parents bursting in. The Ghostwriter nodded.

The door slammed open, but by that point Jazz had completely disappeared from sight and the dysfunctional pair had already made their way out the window. They were quite high above Amity Park now – something Jazz certainly didn't relish in knowing – but her back didn't seem to be reacting nearly as much as either party thought it would, either.

All in all, it wasn't too bad.

The moon was out – full, the writer noted. Being out on his own tonight while the wind was low and the sky was clear would have been a blessing, but… as he looked at Jazz trying her best to stay as still as possible so as not to hurt her back more, and after knowing that Mira had been behind all of this… it wasn't exactly something one could ignore. At the very least, he felt he had somewhat of a duty to keep the Fenton sister safe, if from no one else but herself. Even when she became able-bodied again, he _still_ wasn't going to let her walk blindly into Mira's trap. There would be another way. A _safer _way.

"I always hated it when Danny turned me invisible or phased me through something… it's so _cold_." Jazz mumbled quietly, cutting through the Ghostwriter's thoughts. She wasn't shivering, however.

"I'd stop, but we're completely out in the open…" the Ghostwriter replied, thoughtfully. "We're not too far away, though. Your house's roof really is something else."

"… The Emergency Ops Centre…"

"Is that what it's called? It looks like a UFO."

"You're not the first person to say that…" Jazz chuckled. The writer smiled back, encouragingly.

_So, I'm a person now, am I? That's nice to know._

"Writer, do you even realise how cold you are? Can you feel temperature at all?"

The Ghostwriter looked down at her and thought about it. It was something he hadn't thought about in years, mainly because the temperature was so constant in the Ghost Zone that one could be tricked into thinking it had ceased to exist. On the other hand, when a fluctuation was present it just didn't seem to _register_ like it used to. For one, even when it was extreme there just didn't seem to be any pain involved.

"Well, in a _way_…" he trailed off there, and began a descent towards the Fenton Family home. "If this is worrying you so much, it's probably going to be a bit too cold for you in the Ghost Zone. We should have some time before your parents get back, so I'll stop and pick up a jacket first."

"Thanks…" came a small reply. She sounded somewhat weak.

The house was empty on the inside. With the girl's direction the pair eventually ended up in her room, and finally the ghost reappeared and put her down on her own bed. She was, of course, just as incapable of movement as before.

"Do you mind if I retrieve a jacket from your closet?" he asked politely, not wishing to pry where he wasn't wanted. Jazz nodded the slightest of nods.

Her collection of clothes consisted mainly of black shirts and jeans. What was beside them, however, was a little worrying; a large variety of ecto-weapons were stashed away in there, like a personal weapons vault but without the security. With a grimace, he realised that without his keyboard he was seriously unequipped to be challenged by anything; should something be wanting a fight, he had little means of defending himself. So he took one of the smaller guns and a holster that could attach to one's belt, then went about finding Jazz some warmer clothing. Eventually he came across a black jacket with studs and a pair of knitted mittens, which seemed like they might come in useful as well. He pulled them out, and hung them over the end of the bed.

It was at that point he realised the difficult part about this.

"… So, how much _can _you move without pain, exactly?"

The look he got back seemed to do well enough at implying that she could _not_ move without pain.

"Well, do you think perhaps you could endure it long enough to get this coat over you?"

Jazz was eyeing it as though it were some type of medieval torture device. "Good luck."

_Unless…_

The Ghostwriter held the jacket up in front of himself for a moment, tilted his head, and thought. And then he turned it intangible, phased Jazz's arms into the sleeves, and managed to get it around her with perhaps the most minimal back movement imaginable.

"I've gotta say… I'm actually impressed," said Jazz, a little amazed. "Danny never thought of solutions like that."

The writer just shrugged in return. "Being able to think your way to a solution rather than fight your way to one is often a better option. Although with that said, I'm glad your brother can fight, given how many ghosts have been after his head."

"Pretty much…" Jazz sighed. "Can you put the mittens on? I can't reach."

"Oh, right," said the writer, who grabbed them and quickly stuffed them over the Fenton girl's hands. "There, that should help. Do you feel any better?"

"Yeah, much!"

_Not for long, because I'm about to phase you into your basement_, thought the Ghostwriter, a little guiltily.

He picked her up once more, as gently as possible. Jazz let out a slight grunt of pain but otherwise didn't make a sound, and so they dropped, not quickly but not slowly either, two floors down in the Fenton's basement laboratory. The swirling mass of green of the ghost portal was right in front of them, and now the girl seemed even more reluctant than ever.

"What if the other ghosts attack just because you've got me?"

"They won't. Or at least, they'll probably stop quick-smart when I tell them about Mira," he assured, with a frown. "Trust me, most won't even have the slightest concern. The only reason I could imagine any of them caring is plain curiosity."

She didn't say anything else. For a moment the Ghostwriter took some time to reabsorb his surroundings, and realised with a feeling akin to horror that they had left his book down here and now it was _gone_. Deciding not to worry his companion about such a comparatively trivial matter, however, seemed like a better idea.

The writer refocused on the task at hand. "Okay," he said. "We're going in."

The cold atmosphere washed over Jazz, although it wasn't nearly as cold as the writer himself and the jacket and gloves kept her small body warm enough. Swirling green and floating purple objects were all that could be seen for miles around, but the Ghostwriter wasn't slowing down and she didn't particularly get a chance to look. For this, she was a little glad. Jazz found the whole place dank and eerie despite the persistent green light that permeated everything, and whenever she saw one of the dimension's inhabitants floating close by she did her very best not to make eye contact. Goodness-knows she'd probably turned back some of them.

"Almost there," said the writer, quietly.

They changed course around a random floating rock to come to a relatively isolated little island. It indeed had a burrow in it – a very strangely decorated one at that – and it reminded Jazz somewhat of a hobbit hole. It wasn't nasty or rundown, it was just comfortable-looking. Almost a little welcoming, when you compared it with the rest of the Ghost Zone. If nothing else she was glad to arrive, as her back had gotten progressively worse as they'd flown.

The Ghostwriter landed gently on the island, and made a start towards the door. Before he could even knock, a voice from the inside: "Come in," it said, although whoever owned it sounded somewhat distracted.

The inside was somewhat dank with the exception of a blinding white light over a physician's chair. Despite this, however, it didn't give off the same feel as an unfolding horror story, with the small exception of the Witch Doctor himself; he wore a beak mask straight out of the Renaissance, and craned over his patient as he held his hand just above their stomach. A strange green outpouring of energy filtered downwards, healing before their eyes a large tear that seemed to have almost cut the patient in half.

The patient was Ember. Jazz realised this with some trepidation, but was unable to struggle. So she just watched on as the Ghostwriter held her, as the wound disappeared without a trace.

"This Skulker fellow. It's not my job to tell you what to do with yourself, Ms McLain, but I suggest you stay away from him," said the Witch Doctor, a little… was that annoyed? "It wouldn't do to see a pretty young thing like you here again, now would it?"

Ember said nothing, and got out of the chair indignantly. It was there she caught Jazz's eye, forcing herself to double-take. "You?" she stammered. "What's the dipstick's sister doing here? This is the Ghost Zone! Get out of our-"

"_All are welcome in this practice, Ms McLain_," warned the Witch Doctor, in a voice that suggested he could just as easily undo the injury he'd mended, and probably make it far worse in the process. "Unless you want me to turn you away the next time your terrible excuse for a boyfriend decides to take his anger out on you, I suggest you cut the racism and have a good long think about what I told you."

She harrumphed, picked up her guitar from where it was resting against the wall, and tried her best to stomp her way out in the daintiest way possible. The Ghostwriter stared at her all the way. The Witch Doctor watched her warily, as well.

"Now…" he said, and after a quick look at Jazz, he already seemed to understand. "I assume this young lady needs treatment, then? Her back is in quite poor shape."

The pair nodded, although Jazz's was weak. "She was thrown into a cupboard by Mirabella Spectra," the Ghostwriter supplied. A flash of understanding could be seen even through the Witch Doctor's mask.

"I see. Lay her face-down on this chair here. Just let me alter the shape of it a bit…" he trailed off, pushing a few levers and flattening out the surface space. "There, that should do. Now, gently does it…"

The doctor put a hand over the sore area of her spine as they moved her, and just like that the pain was gone. She could move, adjust herself, and lie down without the slightest complaint, and it was at that point Jazz realised just how bad her back had been. Unfortunately all the pain flooded back as soon as the doctor removed his hand, and she cringed at its sudden return.

"I'll be frank," said the Witch Doctor, apparently frowning under the mask. "Humans are much more difficult to heal than ghosts, thanks to some pretty terrible biology and a long natural healing cycle. You will need rest for at least sixteen hours, and during that time your back should remain as still as possible. There might be some weakness after that period, but strength should return properly after another few hours. Is that perfectly clear?"

Jazz's spirits were crestfallen, but it was still much better than what the doctors in Amity were offering her. "I – yes, okay," she conceded.

"Now, about compensation…" the doctor went on. "I don't use traditional forms of payment – in fact I only take payment in the form of an IOU. One of you will be required to do for me one favour in return for the treatment, at a time that suits me. Do you accept?"

The Ghostwriter had heard about these; oftentimes they turned out to be small errands although occasionally they involved more complicated tasks. It stemmed mostly from the Witch Doctor's complete unwillingness to leave his practice, and when the debt was to be collected his assistant would track you down and supply you with the task at hand. It honestly wasn't the worst arrangement around, so he nodded. "I'll take the debt."

"Good, good," said the Witch Doctor, not unpleasantly. "We'll get started then. You shouldn't feel any pain – if you do, I suggest you speak up. Is that clear?"

Jazz nodded, and the doctor got to work.

It was over in five minutes, and Jazz realised very quickly that she wasn't just not feeling pain – she wasn't feeling _anything at all_. By the time he was done, she was a little bit surprised at how simple it all seemed to be. Pain returned somewhat, but was so minimal that it could almost be ignored. _Almost_.

"That should accelerate the natural healing cycle immensely." He declared, with a smile under that dreadful mask. "Now go and rest. Please try to follow my instructions as closely as possible, or else it will take even longer."

The pair thanked him. Carefully, the Ghostwriter picked Jazz up again, turned around, and started back to the human world. For this, Jazz was infinitely grateful.

* * *

><p>The Ghostwriter stared at the portal. Something was wrong – it didn't look the same as it normally did. It was as if… there was something solid on the other side. He'd almost dropped Jazz at the sight of it, and could feel his own stomach steadily knotting and eating away at itself. It was the first time he'd felt genuinely sick in a <em>very <em>long time.

"What's wrong?" Jazz asked, staring on the portal. "It looks different from this side, doesn't it?"

"That's the problem, it _shouldn't,_" said the Ghostwriter, paling even further. Hesitantly he flew up to it, raised a hand, and attempted to pass through. But even when intangible he was met with a thick sheet of particularly solid steel. "No," he whispered. "Everyone said the gate was _broken_, that it hadn't been fixed in ages…"

Jazz was dead silent, the reality of the situation hitting her like a tonne of bricks. Her complexion was beginning to rival that of her companion's. And then a presence, somehow more chilling than any ghost Jazz had known. She looked up and saw a face she never wanted to see again.

"It _was_ broken…" said Mirabella Spectra, an awful grin gracing her lips. "At least, until I had something to do with it."

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note:<br>**ALL the foreshadowing! :o

I started this without much aim or direction. Oh how quickly that has changed – this fic is going to have a lot of familiar faces. I want to make the dynamics in the Ghost Zone a bit more real, rather than just the usual It's Filled With Terrifying Monsters That Will Hunt Down And Eat You. I mean, well, _yes_, but somewhere in there they obviously have a system that… at least it tries to work, okay? They do their best. xD

Also, I'm suddenly finding it impossible to write chapters under 4,500 words for this thing. Can't really complain with that, considering 14 year-old me used to post nothing over 1,500 words… must be all those dips into the NaNoWriMo. Or maybe six years just does that to you, eventually. I like being older.


	4. There's Nothing Quite Like Home

**Author's Note:**

My mental representation of this story is becoming impossibly complicated. So have fun with that. Also, I apologise profusely about the lateness, university got in the way and this sat half-done on my laptop for a long time. :( Probably everyone has forgotten by now (darnit), but I feel like writing anyway, so let's keep going, shall we?

* * *

><p><strong>Layman Scripts<br>**A fanfic by Pseudinymous

~ **4** ~

- _There's Nothing Quite Like Home_ -

* * *

><p>If there was one thing Mirabella wasn't, it was weak; a well-aimed punch could send you far beyond what the normal constraints of physics thought was legitimately appropriate. She did have a bit of a weakness, however, and that manifested in a total inability to fight at long range. Like the Ghostwriter, she was about as capable of producing ecto-blasts as a paralysed person was of walking, a trait that was most likely derived due to both already holding abilities that were far too powerful for their own good.<p>

The difference between them, however, was that the Ghostwriter needed a crutch; generally, his keyboard. Mira needed no such help, and after noticing the ecto-gun hanging from the writer's belt, immediately dived at it. Apparently there would be no need for meaningless chatter; the woman always was one for getting to the point of things, especially when her enemy was both knowledgeable and armed. Trapped in the Ghost Zone and utterly terrified, the Ghostwriter fled with Jazz held tightly in his arms, her comfort no longer the highest of priorities.

What he really needed was somewhere to put her down, and the safest place would be inside the library, provided he could get the damn lock open before she caught up to them and vanished their only real means of defence.

"Come on, Writer! Can't we talk about this _civilly_?" Mira called, a reasonable-sounding offer that would never have eventuated. "We used to be such great friends!"

"Yeah, back when you didn't seem to be a complete and utter psychopath!" the Ghostwriter yelled back, voice muffled slightly by the air whipping past his face. "I had no choice but to do what I did! I can even get along with _Technus_, but you, you are something entirely different!"

Jazz choked. "Wait, you get along with _who_ now?" she demanded, only to be entirely ignored.

The library could be seen now in all its glory, and all they needed was another thirty seconds. Mira was gaining but not by quite enough, and upon the building's steps sat someone the Ghostwriter was only too happy to see, fiddling with a small piece of electronic equipment and a screwdriver.

"Technus!" the writer screamed. "_Open the door_!"

Only a few seconds elapsed; Technus looked up with surprise and then stumbled to his feet, racing to the door and almost belting it open. The writer flew in with Jazz moments later, screeching to a mid-air halt and nearly tipping the poor broken girl onto the floor. Technus slammed the door shut after them, to which a very sickening _thud _could be heard on the other side.

"What's going on? What's _she _doing here?!" Technus raved, bolting the door and eying it as though it couldn't hold the woman off. "And _isn't that the ghost boy's sister_?!"

"Calm down, Technus!" the Ghostwriter yelled back. "Mira can't step foot in here, the whole library is warded against her." He conveniently left out any confirmation of whether or not they were in the presence of Danny Phantom's only sibling.

Jazz was nearly having a coronary, although very stiffly and very quietly, so as to avoid doing even more damage to her fragile spinal column. She was put down gently and carefully on the couch, where she might have risked closing her eyes had there not been another presence in the room; a ghost she didn't know. As best she could she turned her neck, spying a ghost that looked just like the Ghostwriter sitting in a chair, cradling a book. Same face, same type of glasses, even the same hairstyle if you discounted the fact that the ghost's hair was the starkest of white. They looked like nearly-identical twins, although the fact that this one was sitting in pajamas offset the eerie similarities just a little.

Jazz stared at him, and he looked up from the book he was reading and stared straight back. Both seemed just as surprised as the other.

Meanwhile, the Ghostwriter was arguing with Technus over the technical details of that mysterious keyboard, and had started moving away, with increasing speed and horror, towards another room. Technus led, and the two strangers in the house were left more or less alone together.

"I daresay, girl, you seem a bit too human for a place like this," said the ghost, carefully adjusting his glasses. "You're obviously injured, too. You should have been taken to the doctor."

"… I've already been," said Jazz eventually, having some difficulty trusting any ghost that wasn't Danny or the writer at this point, and she _still _wasn't completely sure she trusted him. "He said he couldn't do anything else for me, that I'd just have to stay absolutely still for the next sixteen hours."

The ghost nodded, an odd tilt in his neck. "And I assume Mirabella had something to do with why you haven't been safely returned to the world you actually belong in?"

"… Yeah, that'd be it." Jazz admitted, ruefully. "Wait, who are you? Are you his twin?"

The ghost gave her an awkward look, combined somewhat with _oh, not this again_. "Actually, we're only half-brothers…" he explained. "Look, _we_ can barely explain the similarities either. So don't give me that damn speech about '_Could you possibly be mistaken?'_. I was born _six years _before Writer was. It was pretty damn apparent we weren't twins!"

Jazz recoiled, obviously having hit some kind of nerve, and decided to be quiet for now. The ghost was staring at her as if expecting the girl to say or do something, but instead met only silence. He looked away – at the roof, which could have been miles above – and then back down at his book, before shifting awkwardly in his chair and closing it altogether. "Sorry. I didn't mean to… my name's Randy. I can only assume that you're Jazz Fenton."

"Glad to know I'm famous…" Jazz replied, sickly. "… You don't want to kill me, either?"

"Good God!" Randy cried. "I'm a scholar, not a butcher. Not _everyone _is out to get you, you know. Some of us are civil."

"… Sorry," said Jazz, quickly, and they once more sat in silence. Randy responded by opening up his book again and flicking through the pages until he'd apparently found the one he was looking for. Jazz couldn't quite see from her angle laying on the couch, but she suspected from the illustration on the front that it was something to do with chemistry.

The ceiling seemed to be far higher than the building appeared on the outside, and corridors leading to who knew how many archives spidered along the walls. Some of these, she suspected, overlapped with each other; space was different here, as if there were so many things contained within this one building that extra spatial dimensions had to be encroached upon just so that everything could fit. Jazz wondered absently whether the writer had ever heard about Time Lords…

"You said you were fixing this, Technus!" the Ghostwriter's voice could be heard, raving from the other room. "So _why is it in pieces_?!"

"You doubt me? I know what I'm doing! I am Technus, Ghost Master of Science and Technology-"

"Yet another blasted argument," Randy sighed, separating the next page and flipping it over. "This isn't where I dwell and it's not my place to be offering hospitality, however I'm sorry you have to listen to my brother and that moron quarrel. It was pleasant here beforehand, when I had Technus kicked out onto the front steps."

Jazz was about to refute the apology, however she was very quickly interrupted. "Randy!" the Ghostwriter yelled. "You were supposed to be watching him!"

"He said he needed to take some of it apart in order to fix it!" Randy yelled back, not taking his eyes off his book. "How am I supposed to know what he should and shouldn't do? I don't understand the first thing about that keyboard of yours!"

"It had to be done!" Technus insisted, still from the other room. "The coils weren't working properly! I had to take the whole thing apart again to fix them!"

Jazz made an honest effort to tune it all out, but her current state of fear and hyper-alertness sabotaged those efforts entirely.

Eventually the arguing died down, and the Ghostwriter and Technus seemed to have come to some sort of mutual (if begrudging) understanding about how the enigmatic keyboard should be handled. Technus stayed behind – the sounds of drills, clanking and other tools became apparent as he got back to work – and finally the writer plodded back to the living room, back drooping and glasses slightly askew. He fixed them as he sat down, and breathed a sigh that had very little to do with relief.

"Okay…" the writer began, thinking out loud. "So the portal is shut. And you're stuck here. And no one can go outside because Mira will beat any one of us senseless. And I can't use my keyboard without the risk of tearing the universe asunder. And we don't have any food."

Jazz's face was something someone ought to have taken a picture of. Randy arched an eyebrow at her, however, and simply shrugged. "But we _do _have food. I have oranges."

"_Oranges_?" the Ghostwriter spat, apparently finding the fruit to be one of the most reprehensible items on the planet. "Why do you always seem to have oranges? _Where are you getting them from_?"

"I have oranges to spite you. It's actually rather amusing," said Randy, slickly. "Honestly, though, I got an orange tree on the black market and decided to see if I could plant and grow it in the Ghost Zone. Turns out I _can_."

The expression the writer was making was filled with unjustifiable disgust, and Jazz wasn't all that sure why. She was happy about the oranges, though – sure, it might be only a single type of fruit - and humans needed a whole range of different foods to survive effectively - but one could be effectively sustained for quite a period of time on something like an orange. They were juicy, filled with water, had sugar, and included enough vitamin C to at least ensure she wouldn't ever come down with scurvy.

"Well… at least that's one problem solved," the Writer eventually sighed, apparently boxing up his anger. "Just don't eat them in front of me."

Randy grinned a terrible, saw-toothed grin. "Don't worry yourself, girl. He just doesn't like them because they don't rhyme with anything."

"Yes, combined with the fact that I was _severely_ allergic to them," the Ghostwriter continued, indignantly. "Nearly suffocating from a swollen throat hasn't exactly been the best fun I've ever had."

"Yeah, but it's not like you're ever going to have that problem again." Randy pointed out. "Give it up. They're just pieces of fruit with an odd-sounding name. I've been telling you to get over this ridiculous hatred for years."

The Ghostwriter glared, stubborn as ever. "You won't win."

Jazz had been staring at the pair of them with obvious bewilderment, and the Ghostwriter started to even look a little bit embarrassed over his own pathology. He shrunk backwards a little, looking desperately at one of the many surrounding bookshelves, and then appeared to busy himself with an idea. "How about I go and fetch some of those books you wanted to read? You'll be stuck on that couch for a while."

"Uhh… yeah, sure." Jazz replied. "Actually… just anything about psychology will do."

"Well, that makes things a bit easier…" the writer mumbled, wandering out into one of the infinities of corridors to who-knows-where. That just left Randy once more, who continued being far more interested with what he was reading than with Jazz herself. She squinted at it again – this time it was held at an angle that allowed her to see quite easily; her first glance had been almost right. It was a beginner's introduction to physics, however the illustration seemed as though it could fit on any chemistry book. Then again, wasn't chemistry, when you got down to it, just applied physics? Isn't that what people said?

What surprised Jazz even more was that it wasn't even physics that had anything to do with the Ghost Zone. It seemed to be a book written by a (probably) entirely human author, and Randy was apparently studying it as though the very same physics applied to him at all. Wouldn't ghosts have a book of physics written from their perspective, relating to the strange environment in which they dwelled?

"Why are you learning that?" Jazz eventually asked, very much in spite of herself. The ghost looked up at her, sighed deeply, and closed the book.

"Because I feel like it," he explained. "That's what I do – I learn and teach."

The research mentality was as potent in Jazz as it was in her parents – it was learned, that was for sure, although Jazz usually found her resulting fixations cropping up in areas relating to psychology. Still, this could be considered a form of psychology, couldn't it? The psychology of ghosts. Now _that _was an interesting prospect, and certainly a field no one had previously tapped into. She filed the fleeting thought away in her mind for later, and then fixed her calm therapy gaze upon the unsuspecting entity. "Would you call it your obsession?"

Randy was tilting his head, analysing right back at her. "I suppose you could say that. But not just ghosts have obsessions, you know – humans do too," and then he added, with a snide smirk, "You're entertaining one right now, aren't you?"

"I -" she stopped and thought for a moment, slightly taken aback at how perceptive her company was, but recovered quickly. "Ghosts are a lot more well-known for obsessive tendencies than humans are. You build your whole existence around them."

"Our existences are _born _of those obsessions. Do not make the mistake of thinking that humans are any less obsessed – merely, they are just less able to facilitate such behaviour."

"But not everyone-" Jazz began, desperately, but she was already being cut off.

"No, not every human is obsessed with something. I can tell you one thing, though – the ones that are end up like us. Your parents are good examples. _You _are a good example. I can only imagine the looks on Maddie and Jack Fenton's faces when they realise, to their horror, that they have become the very creatures they seek to destroy."

Silence settled in the room like dust, and Jazz somehow felt as if she'd been impaled through the stomach, and was lying helpless to do anything. Granted, she _was _fairly helpless right now, considering she'd been told that she should avoid movement under all circumstances. A ghost was telling her this, under that somehow terrifying level gaze and impossibly flat, matter-of-fact voice. He didn't care how she felt, and seemed to derive a kind of amusement in doling out knowledge most people would feel better not knowing in the first place. After all of this, as if it were nothing, he returned to his book, flicked the page and continued reading.

"Before you ask," he went on, without looking up, "It is a requirement to first learn basic physics as humans know them before moving up to anything that might involve this world and its properties. Your parents both researched standard chemistry, physics and biology before moving onto ectoplasmic matters. They are inexorably more complicated."

Well, at least there wasn't any doubt about that. What Randy said made sense.

Moments felt like hours next to him, however. He seemed to hold a unique ability to add inconceivable amounts of time to the smallest lapse, merely by being present. Jazz was so glad when the Ghostwriter finally returned with an armful of books that she nearly got out of the couch herself – before remembering that that would not have been the smartest of her ideas. The writer flashed a quick, sympathetic smile at her, and then put the pile down on the table. "Please ignore my brother. He derives pleasure from watching people squirm."

"Only with the truth," Randy pointed out, without looking up. He flipped another page.

"I have to see what I can do about my keyboard for now, it's probably the only way we're getting back out of here," the Ghostwriter continued, ignoring Randy. "It could take a long time to fix… just keep reading until your back gets better, okay? Or maybe-"

"Sleep?" Jazz yawned, but she plucked a book off the top of the stack anyway.

"Yeah, that."

There was a thumping noise coming from the outside of the library, but everyone ignored it as though it were inconsequential. Against her better judgement, Jazz decided to take the ghosts' reactions as gospel.

"You'll be okay," the writer pointed out, as if reading her mind. "I promise, I won't let anything happen to you."

And then he turned and left, leaving Jazz lying there with a book. It glowed vaguely – definitely a Ghost Zone artifact – but otherwise it was just a normal copy of a normal book about human psychology. Amazingly she hadn't heard of this one, and began flipping through it to find the most interesting parts. Another bang from the outside of the library was again ignored.

* * *

><p>Jazz had slept – surprisingly well, at that. The couch was one of those comfortable ones that gave you enough room to lie down properly, and made quite an effective makeshift bed. She hadn't even had a bad dream; although nightmares had been common ever since Danny had fallen into his coma, somehow tonight hadn't yielded any in spite of the trauma she'd been through. Maybe it was the books, she wondered sleepily, as she tried to wake up. It was pretty difficult to be <em>completely <em>down when you were around so many books…

Suddenly realising that she'd had it stuffed into her pocket all this time, she pulled out her phone and flipped it open. 10:34AM. That had to have been at _least _16 hours, surely. She knew she'd spent around eight hours reading (her tiredness had soon given way to her obsession with psychology), and one could assume with a sleep as good as this, that that too had been eight hours. Was it safe to get up and walk around, again?

Jazz sat up, slowly. Her joints ached a little from being so still for so long, but otherwise not even her spine made the slightest complaint – it was as good as new. Overjoyed, Jazz jumped right up, almost losing balance and somehow managing to avoid knocking over the stack of books she'd been flipping her way through. No one else was in the room to see her blunder, however.

To say the library was big was an understatement, and in spite of herself Jazz couldn't help but want to explore. Yawning and stretching and trying to tame some of her hair into anything even the slightest bit respectable, she began to wander up to the shelves. Most of these shelves, however, stretched all the way up to the roof, and there weren't any ladders; a ghost wouldn't need them, and who else would be here other than ghosts? With that bitter thought, she decided to see what else she could find at a level she was able to reach.

The archway into the library's archives was grand, and particular attention to detail had been paid to the stonework that adorned it. Jazz wondered who had built it, although wouldn't have been particularly surprised if the place had just popped into existence one day. Could things in the Ghost Zone do that? Maybe?

Rows of books went past, and Jazz kept walking. The hallways spawned ever-more rooms of books, as if it never ended, and these rooms seemed to have many corridors of their own. Nothing was labelled; books appeared to have an order although what order it was changed depending on where the books were. As she roamed she felt more and more lost; the same scenery seemed to come and go over and over again, but the smell of all these books drove her onwards. There were corridors in corridors, rooms that overlapped with other rooms, shelves that went to the ceiling…

"You have no idea where you are, do you?"

Jazz swirled around – the voice was behind her, one that she thought she'd finally found solace from. But no, Mirabella was there again, floating and smirking and staring with that terrifying gleam in her eyes. They were covered in pupil-less glowing red, just like Vlad's – but that was where the comparisons stopped. Much as Vlad had tried he'd never quite managed an effect like _this_. Perhaps it was his humanity talking.

Because Mira didn't look like she ever remembered having any.

"I knew you'd wander off by yourself. Couldn't help it, could you?" she sneered, advancing on the girl like a leopard towards its prey. "I've been waiting to catch you alone. Couldn't guarantee it when you were lazing about in that lounge room, see, because I might have been walked in on at any moment. But here? Here… we're so far away from where anyone would hear a cry for help."

Jazz squeaked pathetically, and reached for the non-existent ecto-gun that she sincerely wished was strapped around her side. Mira was within arm's length now, and Jazz's back had bumped into a bookcase that was far too solid for her liking. The ghost stopped there, happy with the level of futility her opponent must surely already be suffering

"Aren't you going to say anything, Jasmine Fenton? Aren't you going to scream at me to give your brother back?"

Tears were forming. Jazz didn't know what to do – this was it, she was cornered. There wasn't anywhere to run, and Spectra was probably about to do all sorts of terrible things to her. But sometimes, just sometimes, humans do very strange things when trapped within the pits of fear. Jazz was no exception – she pulled the first book from the shelf she could and hurled it as hard as she was able at Spectra's face. It took the ghost completely by surprise as the thick spine collided with her nose, snapping it sideways. She clapped her hands over it as the ectoplasm began to pour, relentlessly…

… And then her nose grew by at least an inch.

Jazz stared, baffled at the spectacle. Her eyes darted from Mira's nose to the book with which it had collided, and suddenly it dawned on her – the book was titled _Pinocchio_. It was magic. The _book _was _magic_ – and perhaps the others were too. Was every book in this place a potential weapon? While Mira was still stunned, she decided to find out.

Another book was thrown. This one was a book on chemistry, and it hit her on her bare shoulder, and the ghost screamed out in pain; her skin had become tinged with green and terribly inflamed. Jazz threw another book, but had no time to look at the title. In any case Mira ducked and the book went sailing past and onto the floor anyway, where it lay in a sad little heap.

"How dare you, _how dare you_!" Mira screamed, blind with pain and rage. She was very much about to cause some serious physical harm to Jazz, but she didn't even get that far.

The Ghostwriter had rounded a corner, unbeknownst to Mira, and approached her from behind, a book in one hand and a pen in the other. He pulled the book back, and then as hard as he could, slammed the front face of the book into Mira's head, collecting it and subsequently smashing both against the adjacent shelf. Mirabella Spectra made no sound, and simply drifted downwards until she lay on the floor, out cold.

"Got you," said the writer, quietly, as he uncapped the pen with his teeth and grabbed the unconscious ghost's arm. "The great Mirabella Spectra, beaten by a sleep diary."

"You did it!" Jazz cried, somewhere between a whimper and a shout. But as she observed the writer beginning a sentence on the victim's arm, she couldn't help but ask: "What are you doing?"

He didn't reply immediately, as if utmost mental effort was being put into the words he was writing. The ink of the pen itself was emerald green and glowed on Spectra's skin just as it made contact, but quickly settled down as it dried; in the end, the ghost bore the mark _I will not wake up _in a rather inelegant scrawl. Sighing with relief, the Ghostwriter recapped his pen. "It's not quite my keyboard, but it will do."

"So… you can write anything on someone, and they'll be forced to do what it says?" Jazz guessed, one hand over her mouth. "That's… terrifying."

"Well I wouldn't do that to _you_!" said the Ghostwriter quickly, but then as the danger waned, he looked around, finding three sorry little damaged books scattered across the floor. "… Oh, poor things…" he sighed. "Thank-you."

"You're… welcome?" Jazz managed, but she was shot a glare so possessive that it could only have come from a ghost.

"These books protected you, and it cost them their ability to remain pristine!" he raved. "The books in this place have a mind of their own, girl, and they liked you enough to help stop harm from coming to you. _You_ should be thanking_ them_!"

There it was – previously the Ghostwriter had not exactly been displaying the obsessions he claimed to have, but this overprotectiveness, the insistence that his books were far more than inanimate objects (although being in the Ghost Zone, that could very well be the case), quickly rang true and made him appear far less human in nature than what he'd previously seemed. He picked the books up carefully, thumbed through each to check for damage, and sighed deeply as he bundled them under his arm.

"I'm sorry," the ghost managed, awkwardly. "They are precious to me… but I'm sure I can fix them. Could you please help me carry Mira?"

Jazz looked down at her sorry sleeping form, and with plenty of hesitation, tried to pick her up. This came far more easily than she'd ever have expected, almost tossing the ghost in her expectations that she would be heavier – or, as was the case, have any weight at all. Mirabella Spectra would have been tossed to the roof had Jazz not secured her as soon as she realised what was happening.

The writer was laughing. "How else do you think we can fly?"

"That doesn't explain why you could carry me!" Jazz shot back, and then the writer stopped dead and blinked.

"I… no, it actually doesn't," he noted, staring at his own hands. "How- oh, never mind. Follow me - today's the day we get your brother back."

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note:<strong>

This took far longer to writer than I thought it would. I kept sitting down and then getting weirdly stuck, even though I knew where I was going with everything? Just couldn't spit out the right words? Ah well.

Don't worry, we haven't even tumbled down the rabbit hole yet. This story is a long, long way away from done.

Jazz has been a bit of a damsel so far, but she's new to this, and humans are nearly defenceless against ghosts when disarmed. I sincerely doubt she's going to take to this useless feeling very well, considering how poorly she took to it when she first became a part of Team Phantom…


	5. Getting Along, or Lack Thereof

**Author's Note:  
><strong>… I love procrastinating on exam study by not procrastinating on fanfic. Fun fun!

Time to make Layman Scripts even more complicated. I'm not gonna lie, this is basically a novel now. O.o

* * *

><p><strong>Layman Scripts<br>**A fanfic by Pseudinymous

~ **5 **~  
>- <em>Getting Along, or Lack Thereof<em> -

* * *

><p>Mirabella Spectra was laid out ungracefully over one of the Ghostwriter's coffee tables, spread-eagle and mouth open wide. She was a beautiful ghost, but this excessively unflattering position and her terrible nature shone such a starkly different light upon those otherwise pristine features. She was like one of those popular girls at school, Jazz mused – shallow, plastic and fake. Jazz wondered exactly how far her shadow-like shape-shifting went, and whether the Ghostwriter had known her with a different face.<p>

"I have to hand it to you, that's quite an impressive catch," Randy noted, his arms crossed until he began to poke the side of Mira's now rather extensive nose. "If you ask me, the cosmetic change really is an improvement. Very '_her_'."

Jazz tried to contain a snort and failed, but no one gave her even a second look. Technus had already stolen the spotlight.

"That would be because she lies about _everything_!" the ghost proclaimed, as if no one had dawned upon this enlightenment. Everyone stared at him. "What? Do you not get the joke?"

"Everyone gets it. No one needed to have it explained to them," the writer shot back, impatiently. "In any case, you shouldn't even be out here! You owe me a favour, so stop gawking and go and earn your keep! _Without _breaking the reflector coils this time, _please_!"

Technus stared daggers at the Ghostwriter before crossing his arms indignantly and turning the other way in a huff. Under his breath he mumbled, "If you were trying to fix this yourself, Ghostwriter, you'd be breaking the reflector coils ten times as much as I," he paused for a moment, although he did continued to walk. "I! Technus! Refuse to be treated like a human work slave in such an environment!"

"You might refuse, but that doesn't change the consequences of not doing what's asked for you!" Randy hollered, far more cheerfully than he had any right to sound. "You do remember what we spoke of together, don't you Nikolai? It would be a terrible shame if I were to-"

Randy didn't even get time to finish the sentence. Technus had moved so quickly it was almost as if he'd been lit on fire.

Jazz was stunned. Never had she seen Technus yield to anyone, but somehow the two ghosts she was in the presence of seemed to have single-handedly '_convinced_' him to work for them. "It's like the pair of you attached Technus to a ball of chain," she breathed, incredulously. "How?"

"Quite easily," said Randy, too willing to show the sharpened teeth in his grin for Jazz to ever feel comfortable.

"We asked rather politely. After he'd already started digging his own metaphorical grave, of course."

The colour drained from the girl's face. "You coerced him?"

"How else do you expect us to get anyone to do anything around here?" the writer demanded, irritation clear in his voice. "The Ghost Zone might be okay when you're a ghost, but it's still not the friendliest neighbourhood around. Getting anyone to help you with anything is a downright miracle, so yes, sometimes an amount of coercion must be involved."

"Maybe you'd have more luck if you were friendlier?" Randy asked, innocently. The glare he received could have melted boulders.

"You be quiet. You've driven everyone away from you, so it's not like you're much better! Randy, you're-"

"-Lucky that at least some part of my family is here?" Randy guessed. "Well-"

"Stop it!" Jazz stressed in her most commanding voice, and the two ghosts did exactly as they were told, immediately. They stared down at her, almost looking embarrassed. "Does this really need to be an argument? _Really_?" she asked them. "We're supposed to be figuring out what Spectra did with Danny! You're both, what, sixty-something years old but you're fighting like children!"

Randy's pride stopped him from immediately apologising – merely, he looked away at a pile of books, crossing his arms and huffing. The Ghostwriter was far quicker about it, however, and hung his head. "… I'm sorry. We can get a bit carried away, sometimes."

Behind the glasses, Jazz noted that he was still giving a daggered glare to his brother. It sorely said _Yeah, but you started it_, but the ghost wasn't acting on such thoughts, so she decided to drop it where it was and looked back down at Mira. "So… is there any limit to this power? It's just as long as the ink stays on her arm, right?"

"Every last trace must be removed, otherwise yes, she's asleep for good."

Randy stared at Mira for a few moments longer, blinking at the scene. But then he turned around sharply, at the sound of Technus cursing his own (and everyone else's) existence. "Ah. That would be the third time he's broken the reflector coils this morning."

"How does he keep doing that?" the Ghostwriter griped. "They don't _look _that fragile!"

Randy shrugged. "Apparently the screws are bad and his screwdriver keeps slipping. I better go and check…"

"Yes," said the writer. "You should. _Thank-you_."

Randy disappeared around the corner, almost as quickly as Technus had.

Jazz looked up into the glasses of her only other conscious company, and drummed her fingers thoughtfully upon the table Mira was laid out on. "You two really don't seem to get along very well…" she noted. "Did something happen?"

"Well… we used to get along decently, at least – back in our childhoods and all. He could still be rather irritating…" the Ghostwriter thought aloud, very carefully biting his lip. "Look, it really isn't as bad as it looks, we usually get along quite well, even these days. It's just that a month stuck here together watching Technus has worn our tolerance for each other fairly thin."

The Ghostwriter quickly stuffed his hands deep into his trench coat's pockets, his expression currently unreadable even to Jazz. This didn't stop her from commenting, however: she was curious as always, and simply couldn't help herself in the pursuit for knowledge – and she wanted to know how he'd react.

"… Mum and dad don't believe ghosts are like this. At all. If they'd have heard you mention what you just told me, they would have said I was being played, and that ghosts aren't psychologically complex creatures."

"-Not psychologically complex?!" the writer spat, suddenly. It seemed he couldn't stop himself from beginning to pace, now, and this irritation quickly saw him entirely forget the floor was there at all. "I take issue with that! After all I've been through, to call me – that… it shows a lack of understanding far deeper than I should expect from any ghost expert!"

"Well… that's how it is, back at home," said Jazz, finding that she had to tilt her head steadily higher until the ghost realised what he was doing and brought himself back down to metaphorical earth. "… They think ghosts are just imprints of a person's consciousness, and that more or less ghosts don't interact with each other unless they're planning a group attack."

The Ghostwriter's lips were getting very thin. "I really don't like your parents, their contraptions or their dispositions. Maybe I could change their minds, one day."

Jazz was scoffing, now. "You? I don't think so. I'm their human daughter and I can't convince them – I wouldn't advise you coming up face-to-face with them, whether you're appearing to be human, ghost, or something else entirely. They'd tear you apart – in some cases, literally."

"That's not what I meant. _My _methods of teaching rarely involve such risk."

"… Eh? Wait, that keyboard?!"

"Well, it wouldn't be easy…" the Ghostwriter mumbled, head tilted to the side as he dragged fingers through layers of pitch black hair. "I'd have to-"

"No, you're not going to do that!" Jazz cut in. "That keyboard, it's too powerful! What if something went wrong? What if someone attacked you while you were writing and started doing whatever they liked? It's too risky!"

"It doesn't go wrong. It's too powerful _to_ go wrong, unless it's broken," he commented, reluctantly. "And it backfires spectacularly on anyone else trying to use it. Randy made an attempt as an experiment one day, and needless to say I was dragging him to the doctor not five minutes later. In any case, I'd test to make sure it was working properly, first. I'm not reckless."

Jazz just kept shaking her head, as if the most uncomfortable suggestion in the world had been mentioned. "No. No, you mustn't. Just… we'll figure out ways around them, okay? But don't use your keyboard."

The ghost sighed, and brought his hand up to his jawline, where it came to rest. "Your call. It just would have been easier."

"It would have been, but… eh, thanks. But no thanks."

They sat uncomfortably in silence for some time after that. Eventually Jazz broke it.

"… So, what are we going to do while we wait for Technus to fix the keyboard? How long do you think it will take?"

"With his current level of progress, I'm not sure. The _schedule_ says it should be finished today."

"_AGHR_!" came a screech from the other room. "I! Technus! Ghost Master of Science and Technology! Refuse to be beaten by such a contraption!"

"How the _hell _did you manage to break them _this _time?!" Randy's rather cross voice came next. "Here, give them to me and tell me what to do! _I'll_ fix them!"

The Ghostwriter gave a long, painful groan. "Or it could be finished next year. My money's on next year."

* * *

><p>Jazz spent the rest of her day wandering the library. She'd soon reluctantly attempted to call her parents, and got exactly the response she'd thought she'd get – no signal. This made her anxious, as Maddie and Jack were now probably worried sick about her, but with the portal closed and the keyboard still in a state of multiple pieces, there was very little she could do about it. There was no point in going up to that portal and knocking until someone opened up, mainly because her mother had soundproofed it years ago. Before then, the constant banging had kept everyone awake at night…<p>

It was odd, she thought, as the Ghostwriter started attempting to teach her the ordering of his impossibly complicated archives. She'd never imagined ever feeling even the slightest bit safe in a place like the Ghost Zone, but it didn't seem all that bad, now that she was here – at least inside the library, anyway. Even Technus didn't seem particularly bothered with her, although she somewhat suspected this was due to Randy, who appeared to have the temperament to punish the ghost quite severely in the event of misbehaviour.

This prompted her to wonder what Randy's signature ability was. Most ghosts had one, didn't they? The thought, however, was quickly squashed with the sudden need to drool at an entire section filled with psychology books. The shelf stretched from the floor to the roof, at least fifteen metres high.

From the corner of Jazz's eye, she noticed the Ghostwriter grinning, and tried not to pay too much attention to his teeth – which she honestly wouldn't have found nearly as terrifying if Randy hadn't used them in his menacing smile all too often. But he didn't even seem to notice, and simply gestured towards the section happily. "I thought you might enjoy this."

"Enjoy it…?" Jazz mumbled. "I could _live _here."

"If you were willing to eat oranges for the rest of your life -" the Ghostwriter paused to shudder "- then yes, almost. Although I wouldn't advise it even so."

"I feel like I don't even care…" replied Jazz, beginning to zone out from the conversation as she began picking through the thousands of spines on dozens of shelves. "Oh, my God. Sigmund Freud never even published _this_. I know that for a fact."

The writer shrugged, taking it as a compliment and grinning. "That happens a lot. People write things but never manage to get someone to publish them, or they become too embarrassed or lazy and don't try… but copies end up in my library all the same. Some of the works that find their way here were never even titled."

"Wow…" Jazz sighed happily, doing her best to restrain herself from scaling the shelf. "I wish this wasn't in the Ghost Zone. … I might never be able to come back."

"Oh. Really?" the Ghostwriter asked, not even close to masking his own disappointment. "I thought that- … Well, you'd always be welcome back. Anytime."

Jazz thought about this, finally bringing her eyes and fingers away from the books. "You could always come back to my world, too. I'd let you in. I – I could even give you a schedule of when I'm on duty, so you wouldn't have to deal with mum or dad…"

There was a pause, and finally the Ghostwriter brought his eyes down very seriously upon the girl, indeed. "I don't have any friends," he declared, meaning every word. "It would mean a lot to me."

Jazz's brain seemed to have hit a tree. She stopped, and she couldn't help herself but pry. "None at all? … Why?"

For the first time, Jazz saw the writer stammer. "I just -" he managed, thinking carefully about his words, and crossing his arms defensively. "I don't know. I find most people difficult to speak to on level terms."

She didn't want to admit it, but Jazz found herself relating to that situation more than she liked to think. "… I used to get so focused on studying that I… by the time I graduated, I guess I didn't really have many friends left." She admitted ruefully, slumping. "That was when Danny was attacked, and thereafter my life has just been… it's all ghost hunting. I don't even _like _ghost hunting."

"Well." Said the Ghostwriter.

"Well." Echoed Jazz

He sighed, tapping his foot on the ground and then looked up to the very top rows of books. Finally, he offered the girl a hand. "How about we go and look at the top rows, now?" he gestured. "I can't have you scaling my shelves by hand."

* * *

><p>Nightfall had come, or, as Jazz reluctantly stared at her watch, <em>would <em>have come if she was back in the real world. Instead the ever-present green glow of the Ghost Zone shone its way in through the library windows, day and night having no distinct separation. Despite generally being an indoors person, Jazz was beginning to miss walking outside in the sun. There was only a cold glow here, and it offered no warmth.

Jazz had grown colder as the day dragged on, and eventually found her jacket was no longer sufficing. Noticing her shiver as he walked past the lounge room, Randy had wandered off and then thrown her the thickest coat he could find. "I don't miss the cold," he mused, before stalking off.

The coat itself didn't offer much warmth, but responded quickly to the girl's internal body heat and soon became similar to a roaring fireplace.

She almost fell asleep then and there, on the couch. Just as she was about to close her eyes, she noticed something fluttering down, from one of the top shelves, and it landed directly on her face. It was parchment. Confused, she looked at both sides of it, finding its surfaces to be completely blank. It didn't seem to be from a book – it was of nonstandard size – so it was more likely from a scroll of some sort. Nevertheless, it seemed coincidental that it had fallen on her face – and the coincidence was never to be ignored in a place like the Ghost Zone – so she placed the parchment on top of her pile of books. She looked at a few more of these before actually going to sleep, and the parchment travelled down a few layers, where it lay near invisibly underneath the rest of her reading material.

Just as she was finally nodding off, Randy came through again, and threw a blanket over the top of her. She yawned, pulled the blanket around tightly, and fell asleep.

The parchment remained where it was.

At some point later in the evening the Ghostwriter had finally finished watching over (and yelling at) Technus. The reflector coils were finally no longer breaking, and were installed in such a manner that suggested that if they broke again it would have to be foul play. _What's one more day?_ He thought to himself, reluctantly, as Technus left the library and went home. Everyone was tired, and continuing work at this point would have just increased the frequency and intensity of mistakes.

The Ghostwriter sincerely wished his keyboard wasn't such a crutch. If he had to be honest with himself, he was pathetically weak without it. This was usually fine, as not much of the Ghost Zone actually had a problem with him, but it was certainly something good to have around.

He sat down in his armchair, sitting back and not bothering to take his glasses off, no matter how sleepy he felt. For a minute or two he watched Jazz sleeping under the blanket, its edges curled tightly underneath her. She looked somewhat like a giant beetle, he mused… if giant beetles had long, flowing red hair.

Randy stumbled in a few minutes later, collapsing into the armchair opposite the writer, not taking off his own glasses either. It was like looking into a mirror that didn't seem to interpret colour the right way, and as they fixed their gaze upon each other, each realised there was a lot remaining unsaid.

"There's an elephant in the room," said Randy, slowly. The Writer began to look at Jazz, but Randy shook his head. "No. About the whereabouts of… those. You know exactly what I'm talking about."

"Eghr," The writer mumbled, uncomfortably. "_Those_. I feel like we're on a goose-chase for them, now…"

"It would have helped if someone hadn't ransacked this place while you were locked up in jail. Honestly, it would have helped if you weren't locked up in jail to _start _with."

"_It would have helped_," the Ghostwriter began, stressing every word, "If you hadn't scattered all of those oranges all throughout this place! That orange is the single-handed reason I was _in _that prison!"

Randy arched his eyebrow. "Was it? I was under the impression that the blame lay at least in part with your – frankly terrible – anger management issues. In fact I can see you getting ready to rip into me in about three… two…"

"Yes, alright, I get it!" the Ghostwriter snapped.

"… One…" Randy continued, not particularly caring to restrain himself. The writer took a very deep breath, and then told himself he was at least going to be calm for the rest of the night. Even when Randy was around specifically to try his patience.

"What's more important," the younger sibling began, before the calm feeling he'd barely managed to achieve expired, "is whether Mira knows where any of them are. She couldn't have been the one who desecrated my library, because she can only get in here if I allow it. But it's still perfectly reasonable that she got someone else to do it, so if she knows anything… well, eventually I'll be able to get it out of her."

"And you did check all over for any that might have been missed?" Randy asked. The Ghostwriter shrugged.

"I checked as best as I could. The problem with having all this space is that… it could be anywhere. If there's a few still here I might not ever be able to find them," the writer contemplated this for a moment, closing his eyes. "I suppose it doesn't really matter, in the end. As long as no one _else _can find them, either."

"This is a dangerous betting game you're playing here, brother."

"I know…" he sighed. "I really know."

Jazz stirred slightly; both ghosts looked at her for a moment, but from their perspective she just moved around a bit and continued to sleep. In actuality their voices had woken her from her slumber, but she just hadn't cared to open her eyes. If she had to be honest, she was rather curious to hear what they'd talk about when they thought she couldn't hear…

"You have to tell her eventually, Writer," said Randy, his voice low. "If he is okay and there's a Happy Ending at the conclusion of all of this, you can bet Phantom will have her know what you did."

Suddenly Jazz's hearing sharpened. She did nothing, and just continued laying there in silence.

"… I'll tell her about that soon…" the Ghostwriter sighed, frowning. "I doubt she'll like hearing it."

"You're probably correct, in that assessment."

There was a pause. Both ghosts directed their attentions out the window, pursing their lips and wondering about what was to come. In truth, things were more than a little uncertain at the moment, especially considering that the missing scripts were in reality an even bigger problem than Mirabella Spectra, although she herself was far more immediate. The idea that the two might be linked, however, made the writer's stomach churn, but at the same time it would be a kind of relief. If they had something to do with her, then that was a lead he could use. If they didn't have anything to do with her, then he was no closer to uncovering their whereabouts.

"Your existence is a bucketful of problems," Randy sighed, picking himself up from the comfortable seat and moving to stare out the window. "Ironically they seem to have all come about due to your own power over words."

"Oh, be quiet," the Ghostwriter commanded. "Just because you refuse to use your own power."

"There's a good reason for that, and you know it!" Randy snapped. "The way things are going, though, I might just have to. I really cannot begin to describe how against the act I am, however."

They looked at each other again, and then down to the floor. "… Let's think about that when we get there, shall we?" said the writer, with a small shake of his head. "There's not much point speculating on the worst if the worst is not necessarily going to eventuate."

Randy remained staring out the window for a few minutes, but eventually turned away from it, heading back towards his chair. Except he didn't get quite that far; he stopped dead mid-step, eyes wide and mouth agape. "No." he whispered, staring at Jazz's pile of books.

"No?" asked the Ghostwriter, who turned his attention to where Randy's eyes were pointed and nearly jumped back in his seat. "No!"

Jazz cracked open an eye, finally breaking her intentional illusion of sleep, although she pretended to yawn as if she'd only just woken up. "… No what?"

The Ghostwriter's eyes jumped from the parchment sticking out of her books to Jazz herself, and then back and forth several more times. "Jasmine, _did you touch that paper_?!"

"Huh?" Jazz blinked, sitting up. "What, you mean that blank bit of scroll paper, or something? There wasn't anything written on it. It fell off one of the shelves up there and landed on my face."

Randy's eyes were wide, and the Ghostwriter was visibly shaking – although he seemed at least to be making some kind of effort to suppress such a reaction.

"No," was all that Randy could utter, confusion and shock spreading across his face, "This shouldn't be happening."

* * *

><p>Somewhere far, far away, in a place that few dared to tread, a hooded ghost of indeterminate age smiled at his all-seeing mirror.<p>

"Oh, but it should," the Ghost Master of Time himself chuckled. "… All is as it should be."

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note:<br>**That was interesting to write while thoroughly sleep-deprived. In any case, damnit Jazz, eventually you're going to push some really wrong buttons with this psychological curiosity of yours. D:

In the next chapter, we get to wake up Mira, and see what she has to say for herself. Everything's finally starting to come together, teehee~

Next up: _Chapter 6:_ _The Script of Truth and Lies_


	6. The Script of Truth and Lies

**Author's Note:  
><strong>This chapter's a bit longer than usual, which hopefully you'll all enjoy. It was fuelled by Cowboy Bebop's awesome OST, sleeplessness, and quite a bit more apple cider than I was ever intending.

As a note, I'm attempting to develop my description style. It's a rocky sort of start (and I feel like I'm flailing a bit here, and I'm not always sure it's actually improved at all ._.), but I guess that's what practice is for. -le sigh-

* * *

><p><strong>Layman Scripts<br>**A fanfic by Pseudinymous

~ **6** ~  
><em>- The Script of Truth and Lies -<em>

* * *

><p>In the ancient time ghost's lair, where the intricate layers of causality came to an abrupt, often disagreeable halt, an Observant was rubbing its eye where is temples should have been.<p>

"Clockwork!" it barked, shooting the filthiest of looks with its single, terrifying eye. "You know you're not supposed to alter the streams of time!"

Clockwork did not seem particularly intimidated. If anything, that wry grin shone of deep-seated amusement, and it mocked the Observant and the Order for which it worked. "But," the ghost began, flashing that devilish smile of his, "As Observants, none of you seem particularly adept at observing what must actually be done. Sometimes… time needs a little _push_, here and there."

A clock struck twelve. It was midnight somewhere else, but not here. The Observant was momentarily distracted by the incessant chiming, before it refocused its anger on the issue at hand, horrified at the Master of Time's apparent apathy. "You just caused a human girl to come into contact with one of the most evil scripts in all of creation, how could you _possibly _call that responsible?!" it raved. "That's not giving the time stream a little _push_, that's calling into existence a set of circumstances so dangerous that it could affect the fates of many who were otherwise uninvolved in this matter!"

The gleam in Clockwork's eyes was utterly unmistakable – the light that shone in was not green but blinding white, a reflection that had apparently come from nowhere. "Really?" he asked, still smiling broadly. "I guess we'll see about that."

* * *

><p>Some looks, you could take a photo of. However, the Ghostwriter would have been capable of writing an entire book on Jazz's current expression – the other analogy just didn't seem to do it justice. If she was observing herself as a psychologist, he noted grimly, she probably would have found herself fascinating.<p>

Then again, he was barely registering what was on his own face – great big strips of emotion, of fear, of failing his one sacred duty and of failing her, were tearing through his insides and causing havoc in his mind, knowing what he did of those dreadful documents. To think that one of the scripts had been hiding in his living room bookshelf all this time and he _hadn't _seen it! Ever since being allowed out of Walker's prison, he'd been through every single page of every single book in the main living areas, searching desperately for even a trace of the Layman Scripts he'd hidden throughout. Not one of them had reared its ugly head – until now.

And it had appeared at the worst possible moment. It was as if the concept of time itself was rigged.

The Ghostwriter marched up to the pile of books Jazz had amassed and mentally slid the offending piece of paper from the stack, where it floated up in front of his face, innocently. His power over written material made him one of the only entities capable of keeping guard over the scripts without ever making contact, but now this burden was far more of a curse than an honour.

"I can't… _fathom _how you alluded me so," the Ghostwriter whispered, squinting as he tried to make out the invisible writings that adorned it. "Where are your brothers and sisters, I wonder?"

"… Which one is it?" Randy interjected, leaning forward and adjusting his glasses. His brow crinkled as he read. "… The Script of Truth and Lies, huh?"

"Is something going to happen?"

The voice was so quiet and hollow that the writer only barely recognised it as belonging to Jazz. It was like listening to a piano after the insides had been taken out, mutilated and then replaced – it sounded like a different instrument, and was, in its own way, inherently disturbing. At the moment her voice was one of helplessness, of simply submitting to the fact that something terrible was probably going to happen. Was she really at that point already?

… Where was that bristling Fenton temper, that fearful but determined plunge into what shouldn't be known?

Upon this realisation, the writer didn't know what to say to her. His words caught in his throat.

"Seriously, _what's going to happen to me_?" Jazz asked again, her urgency clear.

Somewhere along that line, Randy seemed to snap out of whatever stupor he was in. His gaze travelled from the paper down to the poor hapless girl who'd made contact with it, and shook his head. "It's… complicated," he managed, with a long sigh. "The scripts were written eons ago by a powerful servant of Pariah Dark, a sorcerer. … Now he's gone, we're not really sure what sort of an affect they'll have."

Jazz was a captive audience. She didn't say anything, waiting for more, and so Randy gave her a sickened look and continued.

"They were called the Layman Scripts because of their nature; to teach something new while removing a layer of free will, of sanity," said Randy, quietly. "Old magic like this is slow; it sets in over a period of many weeks, and affects an entity in waves and stages – but it's also strong, and not easy to reverse or counter. This one in particular, the one you touched… early records indicate that it gradually brought on extremely potent telepathic abilities in anyone who made contact with it, but… they were accompanied by terrifying auditory hallucinations, hallucinations that would encourage a person to follow Pariah Dark."

Jazz was rigid, and very, very silent. At this point, the sound a pin dropping would have almost been overwhelming.

"I'm sorry," Randy added, softly.

In amongst the white-faced horror and panic, the Ghostwriter was finally managing to find his voice again. "But we don't know if the scripts are still active or not, of course," he pointed out, in an attempt to be reassuring. "The sorcerer is gone, and has been for a very long time. A lot of the old magic, ghost power, is extinct for reasons like that. It's a finite resource that tends to dissipate over time."

She was not particularly reassured. To Jazz, the room suddenly felt like a black hole, sucking in every little bit of hope from the air, crushing her hopes into an infinitesimally dense singularity.

… But it didn't crush everything.

"… I-I think we can fix this, sort of," the writer managed. "It's not exactly ideal, but… at the very least, until we find a proper way to counter it, I might be able to protect you from the worst of it."

"Are you _kidding_?" Randy shot back, just as unimpressed as he was taken aback. "You're not going to write on her, are you? Do we really want to risk clashing such strong forces of power? It's not exactly wise!"

"Well, what else do you propose we do?" the Ghostwriter was almost shouting, now, in spite of himself. "Should we just wait until she starts to turn into a loyal servant of the Ghost King, while we fumble about looking for a counter-curse? We can't do that!"

"Better we wait than have your own powers backfire on you! It wouldn't be too difficult to restrain the girl, if we had to, and she wouldn't be getting far in the middle of the Ghost Zone anyway!"

"_Right_!" came a clear interjection, which caused both ghosts to jar and stop bickering immediately, drawing now terrified glances towards their human company. "Don't I get a say in this? Because _I don't want to lose my mind_!"

Randy hesitated. "But the risks-" he continued, lamely, only to be cut off by the sort of firm glare that he never wanted to cross.

"No, I don't care about the risks," Jazz said, firmly. "I want to save my brother, and that's not going to happen if I'm blindly spouting my devotion to this Pariah Dark ghost! So _do it_, Writer. Your library got me into this mess, _fix me_!"

Randy was effectively silenced. He never thought he'd feel intimidated by a living person, but Jazz had done a fine job of exactly that, and so he simply sat where he was and watched intently. There was a distinct unease in the air, an overhead certainty that whatever was going to go down probably wasn't going to be good.

Resolve anew, however, the Ghostwriter lifted a pen from his pocket and uncapped it, trying to remain calm. "It's probably too risky to try to block the entire curse… so this will only prevent it from claiming your mind. Okay?"

Jazz nodded, shakily.

"Remember when you installed that tracking device in me, and you told me not to scream?" the writer asked, holding the girl's hand to the table, where it could easily be kept in place. Jazz's body tried to flinch, but with her arm pinned down she couldn't flinch far.

"… Yes?" she managed.

The writer took a breath. "Well… don't scream."

* * *

><p>The entire event had been surprisingly anti-climactic. There was no pain involved, no devastating and terrible reaction, and as far as anyone could tell absolutely no repercussions. It was as though the old magic was indeed now inert, and on top of all that the Ghostwriter had even written the sentence in some language unknown to Jazz, therefore preventing any awkward future explanations as to why she had devoted half of her arm to the proclamation of not worshipping Pariah Dark.<p>

Mentally on the other hand, Jazz was far from thrilled. Randy had noted this and quickly fled to the archives in order to hunt down a solution slightly less temporary, and now the Ghostwriter was exposed to the full force of Jazz's anger; he felt like disappearing, but strongly suspected this would only contribute to the girl's boiling veins.

"So I'm staying in a building that potentially has even _more _dangerous artefacts, and you wouldn't even be able to tell?" Jazz shouted, her arms stretched wide in the midst of her own hysteria. "What if you _can't _fix the next one? What if the current one isn't really fixed at all? _What if the writing rubs off and suddenly there's nothing between me and the effects of the script_?! The idea of keeping me here in this library was supposed to be that I was going to be safe!"

"Under any normal circumstances, _you would be_!" the Ghostwriter barked, just about as thrilled as Jazz was that his home had somehow betrayed him. He crossed his arms, closed his eyes, and finally fell backwards into his armchair. "I can assure you that what happened here was not a natural occurrence. It's just as threatening to me as it is to you."

"Yes, well, well!" Jazz managed, but the redness in her face had passed, and had been replaced with white. In her spot on the couch she twisted, wrapping the coat and blankets further around her body, and took a very deep breath of the chilly Ghost Zone air. Previously, panicked and furious thoughts had been shooting through her mind, but they were calming now, replaced by the sort of exhaustion that tended to follow periods of great anxiety. "It's not fair…" she whispered, drawing the blankets over her head. "Too many things… all at _once_. I don't even want to think about what you apparently did to my brother."

Part of the Ghostwriter froze; he didn't think she'd heard that part of the conversation he'd had with Randy, but apparently she had. Nevertheless, quite evidently there were far bigger problems than that, and he'd just have to get it over with and dispel whatever her brain was cooking up before it boiled over into something even more volatile than it ever needed to be.

There was a sob. He probably needed to hurry.

"Listen to me," the Ghostwriter commanded, softly. "Your brother and I fought, a few years ago. It was more of a personal spat, nothing particularly serious, and it ended with him blasting my keyboard into a million different pieces. … I've forgiven him for his part in it – in the end, he learned. Whether he ever woke up enough to forgive me for my part in that fight, I don't know. But no one was ever in any serious danger, and I paid for my own vindictiveness dearly."

The lump underneath the covers remained silent after listening to this, although this was at the very least an improvement over crying. Movement could be seen, and eventually Jazz's head popped back up from the blankets – her eyes were slightly red but not overly so, which was also a fairly good indication that at least her mood wasn't going to continue plummeting. She released a long sigh, and closed her eyes.

The Ghostwriter said nothing, although he realised with some resentment that his eyes were betraying a somewhat guilty look even if the rest of his face was as rigid as stone. For a few minutes he stared up at the impossibly tall ceiling, then he finally looked down again, closed his eyes, and gave just as long a sigh as his company had beforehand. Sighing, it seemed, was one of those old human habits that simply could not be shaken, no matter how useless it became.

"Jasmine, I am truly sorry," he attempted, frowning. "It's not fair that you have to endure all that life is throwing you, at the moment."

The girl made a small, incomprehensible mumble of recognition, and curled up into an even tighter ball on the couch.

"… I mean that. What we're all going through here, right now – it's too much. Everything's happening all at once. And I'm aware that I… haven't exactly helped that."

Another incomprehensible mutter, but then she propped herself back up using the armrest of the couch, joining the ghost in staring up at the ceiling. "Well…" she managed. "… I guess what you did isn't… it's not _that _bad. I mean if you really hated Danny, you wouldn't be trying to help me rescue him, would you? And it's not like you knew that the script was there, either… that's… it's not really your fault. Is it?"

The Ghostwriter said nothing. Jazz trembled slightly, however, and then barely stopped herself from crying out in frustration.

"But that means we're both in danger, just by being here!"

You could have tried to cut the tension with a knife, although that alone probably wouldn't have been enough. There was a hopeless feeling welling inside the writer's stomach, like the universe and all of its constituents were somehow working against him, but then he came to the conclusion that there was only one thing he _could _truly do.

The Ghostwriter stood, marched himself over to the couch Jazz was semi-laying on, and sat down next to her with his arms tightly crossed. "Right," he proclaimed. "I swear to _God_, I am not letting anything else come to harm you. We _will _get through this, we _will _find your brother, and you most certainly will _not _go running around and attempting to convert people into followers of Pariah Dark!"

Jazz's face had morphed into something that resembled shock. "You're seriously _this_ protective of me?"

"I-" the writer began, feeling his mouth suddenly go dry. "No, I mean, just... aside from Randy, everyone else is gone. I know I've only known you for a few days – out of necessity, more or less – but I don't want to lose you, too."

"Really?" Jazz asked softly, leaving that word to hang in the air by its lonesome for some time. Her lip curled. "You really are lonely, aren't you?"

The Ghostwriter closed his eyes, tightening the grip on his own arms. "Well… what's the point in being good at something when you have no one to share the fruits of your labour with?"

She shifted uncomfortably underneath the blankets, pulling them around so that she could free her arms. He watched her vaguely but eventually lost interest and sat back, pointing his head towards the ceiling and closing his eyes again, resting them.

"… Maybe we really can help each other," said Jazz.

The writer dared to open up an eye, sliding it to look towards the daughter of two ghost hunters carefully, as if he wasn't quite sure what he'd really heard. She shrugged at him.

"You didn't think I'd forgive you, did you?" Jazz smiled. "Just because things didn't go our way? Because something neither of us foresaw happened? … Because you made a mistake once?"

"Well, I'm a ghost…" he trailed off, frowning. "Given what you've been through, it wouldn't have surprised me."

Jazz's smile quickly became crooked. "In turn. I don't think you entirely understand what you've done for me. Without you, I'd still be guarding that ghost portal, hoping against hope that Danny would just… miraculously wake up, some day. … Perhaps worse, if I'd somehow gotten closer to the truth and Spectra learned about it. I'm grateful."

The Ghostwriter laughed awkwardly, as the tension finally started to ease. "Well, it was the right thing to do, wasn't it? Honestly I'm just grateful to have someone to talk to who isn't Technus or Randy."

She nodded, then went back to curling up into her pile of blankets. For a while they remained in an oddly comfortable silence, until both had well and truly fallen asleep.

And then the Ghostwriter woke up.

Jazz was still so far into her slumber that she was essentially dead to the world, but somewhere during this she had managed to roll over on the couch and collapse into his side, essentially using the ghost as a leaning post. He froze, searching for some method of escape that wouldn't disturb her, but quickly decided that there wasn't one. He was stuck, and he was panicking. Wasn't he too cold to be used as a cushion? Surely he should have felt like a block of ice to her!

The right thing to do would have been to just put her down carefully on the couch and stagger off to bed, which at least would have minimised the risk of complicating matters further. After all, he was a _ghost_, for goodness sake, and, and…

He looked down at her face. She looked serene, and not to be disturbed. Maybe she'd been through so much as of late that this just felt safer to her. The concept wasn't all _that _complicated.

In spite of himself, the Ghostwriter closed his eyes again, panic settling into only a slight worry in the back of his mind. The situation wasn't _disagreeable_, exactly. It was nice to know that someone trusted him enough to lean against him, even though they had just as likely rolled there in their sleep.

… Perhaps he would take Mira's advice, just this once. _Stop thinking about things so much_, she had always said. _You'll just take the joy out of life_.

* * *

><p>The Ghostwriter awoke suddenly to someone tapping him on the shoulder. He looked up. It was Randy, who had taken it upon himself to stare down curiously at the spectacle.<p>

The writer blinked, and abruptly realised the position he was in, twisting to notice that Jazz was still curled up against him and very much asleep. Dread seeped into his heart as he once again made eye contact with Randy, who raised his brow but said nothing. Instead, he simply flew off in the direction of one of the other living areas.

The Ghostwriter slowly and carefully removed himself from the couch, laying Jazz's head down and pulling the blankets over her properly. And then, he followed.

The other ghost had settled a small pile of books down onto the table that Technus had essentially been masquerading as a workshop for the past few months, and broke into a wry grin as soon as his brother managed to join him. "Well, isn't this an interesting turn of events?" he chuckled, although he kept his voice low. "Certainly have a taste for the unorthodox, don't we?"

"You be quiet," the writer commanded, with a hmph. "She put herself there, I just didn't move. Don't ask me how she could stand the cold."

"Naïve you are. Ectoplasm doesn't have to be cold, Writer. It gets warmer very quickly when next to a decent heat source, very much like a metal." Randy explained, flicking his eyes as he thought. "And you still made the choice not to move."

Had he still been alive, the writer could have imagined himself going red. Instead, he was going green. "Yes, well, I was comfortable where I was," he babbled out, crossing his arms defensively. Randy's hands were up.

"In any case, it's no business of mine how you go about conducting your life," he said, but he finished the sentence with a devious grin. "… Is what I would say if I wasn't the only remaining member of your family – not to mention your elder."

The Ghostwriter's face dropped. "You better not be cooking up some ridiculous plot – this… this will sort itself out."

"Oh, I'm not going to do anything, I'm just going to enjoy the circus. Could be interesting, no?"

It was times like these that the writer had to fight every urge in his body not to all-out attack his half-brother, and particularly now the idea was beginning to seem increasingly viable. All Randy did, however, was stand in front of him with a smug look, before picking up a book from the top of the stack.

"I have no actual news from my all-night stint, by the way. I'm still searching. If you were so comfortable there, why don't you go back to sleep until Technus arrives?"

"No. _I'm going to sit down and write_," the Ghostwriter called back firmly, turning around and storming back through his own library, not listening to whatever snide comment Randy had hollered after him. Jazz was already awake and sitting up in the lounge room, now, and she looked at the Ghostwriter oddly as he entered.

"I woke up in the middle of the night," she murmured stiffly, sitting up. "… I put myself there, didn't I?"

"I didn't really want to move or disturb you-" the Ghostwriter elaborated, feeling his face become even greener. "-It was… let's just forget about it, okay?"

Jazz gave a mute and vigorous nod, but then in spite of herself found her tongue kept going. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to cause any trouble-"

"You didn't." he replied, quickly. The Ghostwriter fidgeted for a moment, and then heard the distant growl of Jazz's stomach. "Ah, um, you'll be wanting breakfast."

"You mean more oranges?" Jazz asked, a little sickly. "Well, it's not like there's anything else…"

"Sadly, you are correct," the writer shuddered, getting to his feet – although in the end he didn't even bother to use them. "I'll be back in a moment."

From there he wandered off into Randy's room, making a horrified note of just how messy it had become in the space of just one month. Books and notes lay strewn about everywhere, a complicated mess that reached its peak on top of his desk. It almost looked like a volcano had erupted, spewing words and paper all over the place until it had finally calmed and settled into a state of utter chaos.

Disdainfully, he found what he was looking for; a sack of oranges that was sitting in an oddly proud manner in the corner, showing off its taunting orange gleam.

The writer picked one up. This very action was reluctant, hesitant, and when he'd completed it he eyed the piece of fruit as though it were causing him physical pain. Nevertheless he persisted, and marched back into the living area with an orange in hand. Jazz was staring at him, her mouth wide.

"… You actually did it," she managed. The Ghostwriter nodded in disgust, presenting the offensive piece of fruit to her.

"Here. Take it. Quickly," he requested, honestly glad when the orange had been removed from his person. Jazz stared at it, turning it over in her hands and then allowing her eyes to travel back up to the terrified ghost.

"I don't get it…" she began, hesitantly. "… Do these things cause you PTSD, or something?"

The Ghostwriter's eyebrow momentarily furrowed as he reclaimed his seat, although he absolutely refused to watch the girl as she began to peel the orange open with her bare fingers. "Gods, I don't have PTSD. I just hate them," there was a momentary pause. "… Well, I _did _nearly get killed by one. Twice, actually. Joy oh joy, the wonders of anaphylactic shock."

Jazz was thinking hard, now. "Are you sure, though?" she suggested. "I mean, how old were you?"

"First time I was too young to remember. Second?" the writer thought, tipping his head to the side, although he stopped to shudder when Jazz took a bite. "Well, I suppose… hmm. Ten or twelve maybe? Someone dared me, okay? It was that or get beaten up for being a book nerd, or something equally moronic. I probably should have just taken the physical assault over the ambulance escort and hospital visit."

"It doesn't sound like much fun," said Jazz, taking another bite. She probably would have stopped given her present company, but right now her stomach was encouraging her to finish the fruit right there and then. "But you're telling me that… if I threw this orange at you, you wouldn't freak out?"

"_Don't_." the Ghostwriter warned, eyes suddenly glowing far brighter than they had before. Panic had flooded him and there was no way of stopping it. "I mean it. _Don't_."

Jazz was almost giggling. "It's okay. We can work on that."

"_We will not be working on that_!" he spat, with an indignant huff. "What would you do if I threw an orange at you, hmm?"

"Depends whether it burst all over me or not," said Jazz, apparently putting utmost mental effort into the task of figuring this out. "If so, then I would probably take a shower. If not, I would throw it back in your face."

The Ghostwriter was appalled, and his expression clearly showed it. "At my face? What if you broke my glasses?"

Jazz thought about this, too. "Do ghosts even really need glasses?"

"I, well, I…" the Ghostwriter trailed off. "Not really, no. I'm just used to wearing them. These don't even have any sort of magnification."

"I wonder what you look like without them?"

At first the Ghostwriter didn't think anything would come of it – surely the girl was still particularly sleepy, enough that she wouldn't go ahead and attempt something so devious? But apparently he was wrong. Jazz got to her feet, stretched until a few of the bones in her spine cracked, and then stalked over to the chair the writer was sitting in. She was grinning a most determined grin indeed, the glint in her eyes unmistakable.

The writer sank further into his chair. "Don't," he warned again. "I'm serious. I don't like people touching them."

Jazz let out of a soft giggle, and simply shook her head. "You fell for it. Although I am still curious about how you look."

"Yes, well that's for you to wonder," the Ghostwriter proclaimed, with an indignant huff. "You seem to have a lot of spark about you this morning. Are the oranges going to your head?"

"Maybe," Jazz mused. "I'm sorry, I was just interested to see how you'd react."

An outward sigh of relief. The writer finally picked up his pen and notepad, breathed out, and tapped the pen upon the page. "Well, anyway," he managed, "We've a little time to pass before Technus gets here to finish off the keyboard. I'm going to write. Perhaps you could… return to your stack of books?"

Jazz's face fell slightly, but nevertheless there was an agreement in her nod, and she plucked the first book off the stack after entangling herself within the blankets again.

As he set the pen down on his pad of paper, however, a very strange thing happened; nothing came to mind. Normally he could think of a few words to start a story off and then just wing it from there, but not even that all-important first word would reveal itself to him. The writer grunted slightly, shifting positions where he sat, and then even tried looking at the paper from a different angle.

Blank.

* * *

><p>An hour had gone by. A blank piece of paper was still staring him in the face, taunting him with its pristine white surface. He'd tried poetry, he'd tried prose, and he'd even tried non-fiction, which was territory that the Ghostwriter was rather new to. Nothing seemed to help.<p>

He wasn't sure how, but he was fairly sure it was somehow Jazz's fault. The girl seemed to be taking up more space in his head than she had any right to.

The arrival of Technus was far more appreciated than the technology ghost had ever expected. Rather than with the snide remarks and general banter that usually went on, the Ghostwriter had welcomed him thankfully and shown him straight to the keyboard, a gesture that Technus himself wasn't positive he'd ever received before. In a surprising turn of events, the keyboard was (theoretically) finished within the air, and the pair of ghosts found themselves staring at their handiwork rather proudly indeed.

And it was over. No bickering. No anger. No proclamations of being better than anyone else. Technus simply stated that he had fulfilled his end of the bargain, and left.

This was turning out to be an odd day indeed, thought the writer.

Now he was staring at the unconscious form of Mira. Jazz was still picking through her books, and Randy had presumably disappeared… somewhere. The keyboard had melted into thin air once completed but now he could finally feel its energy combined with the rest of his own, resting in its rightful place for the first time in so long that the Ghostwriter had almost forgotten what it had felt like.

He debated telling Jazz that he was going to interrogate Mira alone, but decided against it. If something was to go wrong, he wanted her well out of the line of fire – she probably wouldn't be happy with him, but she was still a human, and humans, sadly, were quite flimsy in comparison to ghosts. He didn't want to see anything else happen to her. She didn't _deserve _it.

And then there was Mirabella Spectra.

"Mira…" he breathed unsteadily, eyes flickering over the other ghost's face. "I just wish I knew what happened to you. I'm so sorry for this."

* * *

><p>Chance had a habit of drawing Jazz in the exact direction she was least wanted.<p>

She didn't realise that Technus had left, that the keyboard was finished. All the girl was intending to do was watch the ghosts as they worked, but her desire to head to that room inevitably took her through the area where Spectra had been kept, immediately putting her in more danger than she could even recognise at the time.

… Or not?

Jazz's heart was pounding, catching in her throat. Mirabella Spectra had immediately taken the opportunity to fly up to her, cornering Jazz into a wall. It was clear the keyboard was only working sporadically at best, and Spectra was about as restrained as a wild dog on a leash held by a toddler.

And then the ghost held out an arm. It came to a rest upon Jazz's shoulder, and when their eyes met, suddenly everything was strangely, eerily calm. There was no assault. No painful kick that could shatter bones, no punch to the face that would leave any normal person unconscious.

'_Help me!'_ came the scream, from a thousand different directions. At first Jazz thought it was in reference to the Ghostwriter, however every sense in her body seemed to be telling her that it wasn't, that it was something else entirely. _'This isn't me, I didn't want any of this!' _the scream continued. _'We're all just her playthings, the-'_

The single-most terrified cry for help that the girl had ever heard, or ever would hear, was cut short. Suddenly the world whirled around Jazz, and finally threw her onto a very familiar bed in a very familiar room.

She was back home.

In the real world. _Suddenly she was home_.

And the yellow post-it note, that taunting address adorning its surface, slid out of her pocket.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note:<br>**Rewrite took an age. This was an 8,000 word chapter that I wrote in an all-night stint a few weeks back, but didn't have the time or energy to edit for a long while. It took me a very long time before I was happy with it, unfortunately, but I'm glad that I can move on now.


	7. Interlude (I)

**Author****'****s Note:  
><strong>… Wow, this got an update. I guess I've got an itch to write everything at the moment. Everything gets updates! Yay!

Short interlude chapter. Had it written for like a decade (okay, exaggeration), but I never got around to fixing it up properly until about two hours ago. ._.

I guess it's time to get the ball rolling, again?

* * *

><p><strong>Layman Scripts<br>**A fanfic by Pseudinymous

~ **7** ~  
><em>- Interlude -<em>

* * *

><p>"<em>I know you think I<em>_'__m your twin, but I__'__m not. We__'__re only half brothers, the both of us. Eight years and different mothers separate our births. Please, I don__'__t want you to be so sad. I can__'__t stand the torture of being forced to watch.__"_

* * *

><p><em>Thirty-Three Years Ago:<em>

There was a bright and sunny look about her face, one that would have shone quite beautifully in dappled sunlight had they not been sitting in the middle of the Ghost Zone. She was far too good for this place, the Ghostwriter decided.

"Are you just going to stay here with your library and mope?" she asked, poking the side of his cheek as he leaned away warily. "You can't do that. That's silly. I mean, you didn't do that when you were alive, did you?"

"I made a damn good attempt at it," declared the Ghostwriter, not a hint of regret in his voice. "Things like buying groceries and working and studying tended to get in the way of allowing me to regress to my proper status of being _completely _shut in, but I was getting there quite happily."

The other ghost seemed to ignore the remark, and she decided to busy herself with hanging both of her legs right over the edge of the stairs, where her feet hung above the great green abyss below. horror and awe passed over the writer's face — how could she stand it? How could any of the other ghosts stand it? The very thought made him feel ill, and slightly maddened. Flying may have been a thing, and he knew quite well that he was capable of it, but what if lack of practice caused a fall? What if he couldn't get back to his library? … What if he ended up in the jaws of something truly dangerous?

And who the hell _was _this woman, anyway? She had appeared, apparently out of nowhere, and didn't seem to mind that they had no previous acquaintance with each other. Normally he would have thought the situation to be suspicious or even dangerous, but the pit of his stomach was saying other things.

"You don't think properly," she said, cutting through the sudden silence. The Ghostwriter blinked at her.

"I'm sorry?"

"I said, you don't think properly. You think that hiding away will solve your problems, rather than facing them."

"It's a valid coping mechanism, thank-you very much."

"Maybe, maybe…" the ghost sighed. She seemed to relax and settle in for a moment, but this was a rouse. Without any warning at all and in a great big sweeping motion, she pushed him straight off the stairs, where he hung in the air disjointedly as his mind struggled to keep up with what had just occurred. "And this, my friend, is a valid treatment option."

"A valid _what_?!" the Ghostwriter began to yell, eyes popping as he scrambled to right himself in such unfamiliar physics. "Why the hell did you do that?! What's wrong with you?! For God's sake, pull me back to the steps right now!"

But he looked up at her, into those wide glassy green orbs, and started to relax. Her look wasn't smug, nor was it amused. It was… patient. She was willing to wait through the panic and tantrums and worries and sadness, because apparently it was what she was compelled to do. He wondered if she had done this to anyone else, or whether she had saved it just for him. Or, on the flip side, maybe he was the only one ridiculous enough to act like this.

"I'm not pulling you back to the steps. If you really want to get back to them, do it yourself."

She didn't give him time for that, though. Instead, she leaned off the stairway she'd been standing on and took a graceful step out onto the nothingness, inching closer. And, oh lord, she did look far too beautiful for her own good as she did that, almost as if she'd preplanned and orchestrated it. The way she moved was almost hypnotic. In spite of his better judgement, he decided to stay put.

"See? You need to stop thinking about things so much," she said, a kind but knowing smile beginning to spread. "You'll just take the joy out of life."

"_What _life?"

"See, you're doing it again! And did it make you feel any better?"

Well, not really, but he felt too indignant to answer. "… Who are you?" he asked, instead.

The other ghost was smiling pleasantly. "My name is Mirabella, but only my sister calls me that. Everyone else just calls me Mira."

"Mira…" said the Ghostwriter, turning the name over on his tongue. "You don't hear that name much these days."

"Mother was always fond of it," Mira shrugged, floating around him. Her long black hair splayed as she went, but somehow always managed to avoid getting in the way, and he traced her with his eyes until he was eventually forced to turn around, looking away from his library and onwards to the endless green. She gestured to it, the great world beyond, and the Ghostwriter felt his stomach drop.

"You're not asking me to go out there, are you?"

Mira gave him a genuine laugh. "Oh, honey. No part of this is a question."

The writer looked down at the abyss below their feet. A whirl of dizziness later and he decided that he rather liked his library after all, thank-you very much, and he began to back away awkwardly to the relative safety of its stairs.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

But he didn't respond, he turned around swiftly and began to race back to the library. He was almost at the front door when Mira suddenly materialised in front of him, out of thin air. "How did you do that?!" the writer had gasped, and he jumped backwards. "Oh my God, please leave me be!"

Mira's eyes glowed brightly as she threw a wicked grin. "I'm not leaving you be. This is one of my special powers, and wherever you are you can't stop me from using it. So it looks like you're coming with me after all!"

"I don't even know you!" the Ghostwriter spluttered. "Please, I'm not ready for this, I've only been here a little over a single week! It might be easy for you, but-"

"So? I've only been here for two weeks, tops."

The Ghostwriter stopped, immediately.

It just begged the question of _how_. How had she acclimatised so quickly? How had she already gotten so much control in such an unfamiliar place? _How on earth was she so damn enthusiastic_? She almost looked excited to be here in the Ghost Zone, and as much as the writer was used to putting himself into the rainbow of mindsets his characters displayed, he just couldn't imagine any way to interpret this current situation as good. So he stood there, gaping at her instead.

He wasn't saying anything, now, and Mira's head had drooped on one side. "God, I think I broke you. Hey. Hello?"

The Ghostwriter struggled out of his near catatonic state. "_Only two weeks_?!" The response only prompted another one of those cheeky grins from her.

"Yeah, so come on, get your shit together and come exploring with me. It'll be fun!"

"It will _not _be fun! What if I can't find my way back? What if we get _eaten_? What if you're actually a psychopathic-"

Mira rolled her eyes. "You're no fun at all, Ghostwriter."

"Don't call me that!"

"Why not? It suits you. You've got writer written all over you. And you are a ghost."

"Yes, I might be a ghost, but rather _reluctantly_ at that. Maybe someone as twisted as you enjoys this hell, but I certainly don't. And I don't want to be associated with it or even think about it."

"That's too bad, because you're living in it," Mira had hummed, still grinning — Gods be damned. "Come on, Ghostwriter. Think about all the weird things we could see! Maybe some of it will inspire you."

"_Stop calling me that_!"

"Okay okay, so I'll call you something else if you come with me."

The Ghostwriter stopped arguing at that point, and backed a few steps away down the staircase. This Mira person was not, under any circumstances, going to be dissuaded in her intentions and was absolutely determined to get him to "come out of his shell", or something of the like. The problem was, of course, that he was rather convinced that there was no shell to come out of in the first place.

But he looked a little closer, and it seemed she was almost pleading with him, now. The expression on her face had changed subtly, and he started to realise that she wasn't just doing it just for his own sake; she was probably lonely and trying to seek out someone she could trust in such a strange new place. She was New, after all, like him. It would make sense with her sort of personality, too — or, it seemed to make a kind of sense, anyway.

The writer's words began hesitantly at first, and he looked away to the side, where the swirling green unknown taunted him. He bit down on his lip, quickly stopping when he remembered how sharp his teeth had become, and spoke.

"I could fill several books with the traumas I've experienced in the past one and a half weeks. Don't you _dare _add to them."

"If that's your roundabout way of saying yes, I'll take it," said Mira, pure glee spreading across her face. "Everything will be fine."

"Everything will be fine…" the Ghostwriter repeated, unsure if he truly believed that.

* * *

><p><em>Thirteen Years Ago:<em>

"What's going on?!" Randy yelped, as a slew of very disturbing banging sounds hammered behind the door. "Hey, what the hell happened?!"

"It's Mira!" the Ghostwriter gasped, still trying to catch his breath. "She's gone insane!"

"Can't she just teleport in here?!"

"No, I warded this place before I left, and thank the _Gods _for that!"

The two brothers stared fearfully out the window of the Ghostwriter's library home, although there wasn't anything they could see; Mira was evidently still trying to bash her way through the front door out of eyeshot, and as she did she screamed and raved about not being able to simply teleport through. The Ghostwriter's look darkened when he turned back to face Randy, unable to quite make eye-contact. But he didn't speak.

"She was never this strong beforehand…" said Randy, slowly filling in the relative silence. "What do you mean, _'__gone insane__'_?"

"I mean, she literally went insane," said the Ghostwriter, trying to be patient. "I haven't the foggiest clue about what happened to her — I just heard from the postman that she'd lost her mind and tried to attack him. So I went to investigate, but then, then… well, just look at this!

Randy's eyes nearly fell clean out of his head when the writer tugged his shirt up, revealing a horrible and rather messy gash along his side. It had at least stopped gushing rivers of ectoplasm - thank goodness - but it was still the sort of wound that took an incredible amount of power and hatred to inflict. And it wasn't the sort of power either of them had ever known Mira to be in possession of, either. So why now?

Randy gulped, his eyes flicking between his brother's face and the injury, up until the Ghostwriter let his shirt go, where it settled down messily. "I think someone did this to her, Writer…" he managed. "This isn't normal."

"_Who the hell are you talking about, Randy? Me? Because I__'__ll show you what__'__s not bloody normal!__"_

"Oh ye Gods," said Randy, face turning green. "I think I'll stay the night. And cancel class in the morning. After my previous altercation with death, I would prefer that my next one kept my insides in the right order."

"No objections!" said the Ghostwriter, who had collapsed into his armchair with his fingers pressed against his temples. "What are we going to do? There's no _way_ that's the Mira we know."

"Have you tried using the keyboard?"

"It just doesn't work. And I can't get anywhere near close enough to try writing on her."

Randy looked to the stacks and stacks of books, over the infinite shelves and through endless corridors. Surely, there had to be something on this, _somewhere_. Someone would have seen this before, and they would have written about it, and it would all make sense. And maybe, just maybe, there would be a solution.

After all, without Mira, the Ghostwriter wasn't particularly functional at all. She was the only one who ever really managed to coax him out of his own lair for anything other than what was completely necessary. In fact, he would probably regress into the state he had been in for some time after Randy had died without her — cold and bitter and very much alone in the world, books and writing his only reprieve.

"If there's an answer, it's in here. And I'll be the one to find it."

The writer looked up at his brother, finally removing his hands from his head. His eyes had become worn and reddened, a sure sign of the distress he was in, but nonetheless he managed the weakest of smiles. "We'll both find it. And everything will be fine."

If only those words had been more convincing.

—-

**Author****'****s Note:**

Sometimes, Randy is kinder than he seems. But also more selfish than he would ever like to admit.

The treatment option Mira is referring to is called "flooding", by the way. Valid psych jargon. Look it up if you don't know it, it's used to help decondition someone from fearing something. It also happens to be incredibly unpleasant, if you have a serious genuine phobia. Think of it as throwing someone in the deep end. Terrified of spiders? Lock the person up in a room full of them, and don't let them out until the person finally calms down. Sometimes this can take hours. And yes, it tends to be tantamount to psychological torture.


	8. The Inevitable Malfunction

**Author****'****s Note:  
><strong>Update! Why did this take a month to write? -sobs-

Either way, I finally planned out the rest of this story. We have a total of 22 chapters that altogether will total around 90,000 words. Sheesh.

Onwards!

* * *

><p><strong>Layman Scripts<br>**A fanfic by Pseudinymous

~ **8** ~  
><em>- The Inevitable Malfunction<em> -

* * *

><p>Jazz blinked, her head spinning around in a daze. Her room hadn't changed in all the time she was gone, but for some reason it now looked inherently unfamiliar, uninviting, and very unwelcome. Why had the Ghostwriter sent her back here to the real world like that? Was it because he thought it was too unsafe for her in his library with Mira? To <em>hell<em> if it was unsafe-

She stopped her brain in its tracks. Bad train of thought. If he had done this to protect her, then it was hardly something she should be complaining about. But streaks of worry were shooting through her mind — if it was so dangerous that he had thrown her back here, then how was he going to cope? Whatever her original personality might have been, Mira had proven herself time and again to be a dangerous and sickening adversary. Just because he was friends with her before she'd lost her mind, didn't mean the writer was going to be able to stand up to her now. Even with the keyboard working, it was also quite evidently malfunctioning. None of this was a good sign.

And then there was that hint, that small trace of telepathy. Had the script really begun to take her that fast? What if the writing on her arm didn't actually help at all?

What if she really _was _destined to lose her mind to this thing?

Her thoughts were swiftly interrupted, however, by a brilliant flash of light followed by a confused and deafening crash. Two beings that were surprisingly less-mystical-than-normal had landed in a heap on the floor, and appeared to be struggling to get at each other's throats. One was a very human-looking Ghostwriter, and the other a female that Jazz had never seen before in her life.

"What made you think a stupid trick like that was a good idea?!" the female screamed, quite definitely in Mira's voice. "Now you've gone and done it!"

The writer had almost managed to get a hold around her throat when she dissipated into thin air, apparently still able to use that infuriating teleportation trick, leaving him to fall into the carpet with a soft thump.

"_Ouch_," he grumbled.

Jazz barely knew how to interpret what she was seeing, and her eyes widened until they were almost perfectly round. "Y-you're _human_?" she stammered. The 'ghost' gave her a sardonic look.

"I'm human," he drawled back, lips curling in distaste at every syllable that made the words up. At first he tried to arrange himself into somewhat of a sitting position, but after nearly falling in a heap he leant back against the wall, not even managing to prop up anything but his neck. "Gods, these bodies are heavy! I'd completely forgotten how cumbersome—"

"How did this happen?" Jazz cut in, not particularly thrilled with the idea of listening to the rest of the writer's grumbling.

He shifted uncomfortably, managing to draw himself up against the wall a little more, and frowned. "Malfunction," he said, rolling a pair of definitely-not-laser-green-anymore eyes. "I was trying to strip Mira of her power. I'm not sure how it ended up with the both of us suddenly becoming human, of all things, but in the confusion I accidentally scraped my hand across the keyboard and shortcutted back to the part where I sent you here."

There wasn't any other way to describe it. Jazz was stunned, and she couldn't help herself but climb off her bed and take a closer look. The writer's eyes had dulled to a darker green, his skin seemed perfectly normal and healthy under standard human conditions, and there was a distinct lack of any pointed ears or sharpened teeth. Even the most discerning of ghost hunters wouldn't have looked twice — there was literally no way to tell that this man was _supposed _to be a ghost.

Although there was the small fact that, from Jazz's parents' point of view, he would have suddenly gone from being a victim of argyria to a miracle cure case. This would be a rather peculiar turn of events, considering the small fact that argyria was an irreversible condition.

"You can stop staring at any time now," said the writer, moodily. "I'm not some circus animal, you know. I'm the innocent victim of an accident which was almost certainly caused by Technus. Who I will gladly have some very serious words with the _moment _this wears off."

Jazz wasn't so convinced. "You're sure it'll wear off?" She received a shrug.

"Everything else on that keyboard does after a few days. Granted, it's never been able to reverse a ghost into a human before…" he said, trailing off, but soon became aware that he was being regarded with a careful psychiatrist-in-training look. "… I was in a dark place," he managed. "Look, it doesn't matter."

The girl nodded slowly. "Um… Sure." Whether or not she was being sarcastic was left hopelessly unclear.

The writer rested there for a minute or two, before finally trying to rise to his own feet. But this effort was thwarted when he nearly toppled sideways, the only reprieve being a lucky save from the windowsill. "Why…" he moaned. "Why human? I don't have the sense of balance for this anymore. How did your brother even cope?"

"Well for starters, he never lost his normal sense of balance in the first place," Jazz reasoned, tapping the side of her chin thoughtfully. "… I'm sure you'll get used to it?" Although she wasn't too certain about that one, considering all of the trouble he seemed to be having. The writer had now managed to hook himself on the open window, and was using it to sit properly upright.

It was almost a bit pathetic to watch, and Jazz was fully intending to go over and help him at least stand, but the sudden presence of noises downstairs swiftly took priority. She listened, ears pricked, and then with a sinking feeling realised those noises had turned into footsteps travelling up the staircase.

"_Shit_, I thought they weren't home!" Jazz hissed. "Quick, hide!"

"You expect me to—"

"Under the bed! Just do it!" she commanded, pointing wildly to the floor underneath the offending piece of furniture.

The Ghostwriter knew better than to disobey. But he showed no signs of moving quickly, and the footsteps were getting closer. So Jazz grabbed him by the arm he had hooked over the windowsill and dragged him to the side of the bed, once again pointing urgently at the gap. In his fastest and yet most reluctant action since being rudely dumped out of the Ghost Zone, the writer crawled under the bed frame. All of this was just in time for Maddie and Jack Fenton to burst in through the bedroom door.

"_Ghost_ — Jazz?!"

"Do I look like a ghost to you?" Jazz shot back moodily, eyes darting over the wealth of ghost hunting equipment her parents had just smuggled into her bedroom. And then suddenly she remembered her manners, and realised that they hadn't seen her in days. "A-also… hi?"

Maddie dropped the Fenton Bazooka she had been holding straight to the floor — which thankfully seemed to be locked into safety — and nearly dived towards her daughter, swamping her in an all-encompassing hug that was in every way unavoidable. Jazz stood there, arms hanging limp, while her father decided to join in too.

Jazz was speechless — mainly because she had no idea what the appropriate thing to say was when you'd been missing for several days — so she chose the safest option, which was to just allow herself to be smothered. To her regret she never did tell her father that his hugs tended to strangle her, slightly, and that she currently had a part of his inner elbow squeezing at her jugular.

"Jazzy-pants!" her father cried.

"I can't believe you're home!"

Maddie was the first to let go, and she brought one of her hands right up to her mouth as she used the other to pull off the hood of her hazmat suit. Underneath, her eyes were bloodshot and weary, but her expression was all kinds of excitement and relief. If only that could have lasted, as two seconds were all it took for Maddie's face to plummet into a steady, worried frown.

"Jazz… what did that ghost do to you? _What did it look like_?"

That was… fast. But then, it was a household of ghost hunters — Jazz supposed it was only natural to automatically assume that a ghost was at fault, especially under the circumstances in which she'd disappeared.

"I, uhh… didn't get a good look," she said. "The contact lenses didn't work for it… it was completely invisible."

The lie rolled off her tongue far more smoothly than she'd suspected it would. Perhaps she _had _learned something off her little brother, after all. At the very least a statement like that should have her parents chasing their tails for a little while, and as planned, Jack had well and truly taken the bait.

"I've never seen a ghost like that!" he piped up, finally peeling himself away from his daughter. Jazz heard a slight movement under her bed, which may have been a chuckle, but no one else seemed to notice. "Perhaps it's a new type classification!"

"Or, they're adapting," Maddie noted distastefully. She was particularly tense. "Honey… how did you escape? And the hospital said your back was injured, too."

"It healed me and let me go," Jazz continued to lie. Maybe that's how Danny had coped; he got on a roll and continued to play it out until his parents believed all of the important bits. "It didn't hurt me," she continued, beginning to spin herself a little nest of half-truths. "I think… she was lonely, and just wanted someone to talk to her for a while."

Neither Fenton parent seemed to comprehend this new and startling piece of information, however. Jazz felt some renewed resolve — if she could just get them to—"

"Impossible!" said Maddie.

Jazz deflated. And then she barely stopped herself from cowering, as her mother's eyes looked as if ready to roll clean out of her skull.

"Young lady, if this is some sort of attempt to get us to look at Phantom differently—"

"It's not!" Jazz rallied back, sounding far less confident than she'd hoped she would. "I swear, that's all the ghost wanted. I dunno if there were any ulterior motives or whatever, but… I'm just telling you the reality."

Maddie looked back at her husband, obviously trying to scout out some morsel of clarity in this strange mess, but Jack Fenton wasn't a man that was particularly good with clarity. He just stared vacantly back at her with a begrudging but otherwise empty shrug, bottom lip curled under his teeth. Maddie gave an exasperated sigh, and redirected her hefty gaze back to her daughter.

"Well, whatever happened, where did this _ghost _take you?"

Something yellow on the bed caught Jazz's eye - the post-it note was still lying there, displaying the all-important address for Spectra's assumed trap. She tried not to look at it but by the time she was telling herself this, it had also caught her mother's attention too, and Maddie picked the note up, scanning the loopy handwriting with quick and discerning eyes. When she was done, she flashed it towards her daughter.

"Is this where you were taken?"

"No," said Jazz.

"Are you absolutely sure?"

"Yes!"

Maddie brought her spare index finger to the corners of the note, which she began to gently flick until they became scruffy and dog-eared. "Then, what is this address? It's not that old shack right at the T-intersection near the end of Boundary Road, is it?"

Jazz tried to shrug as genuinely as she could. "I found it on the street, and I just wondered what it was for. It's been in my pocket for a few days, I was meaning to throw it out," she tried, but the lie was broken now, and Maddie was giving her one of those sly looks. Jack watched on, not willing to get involved.

"Don't think I can't tell when you're lying to me, Jasmine Elizabeth Fenton. I always knew when Danny was lying, and you're no exception," she said, the weight of several planets weighing on her voice. "That house has had several strong ectoplasmic signatures floating around in it for months, but we've never managed to find any other trace of a ghost. If it really is true that there are ghosts who can get around the Fenton ThermoVision Contact Lenses, then the whole puzzle just fits together, doesn't it?"

Jack's face twisted from modest confusion to glowing resolution. "Mads, you really are the genius I married."

"Don't I know it?" she grinned, but her expression morphed almost immediately into something quite a bit more severe. "Jasmine."

"… Yes, mum?" said Jazz, who was now trying _not _to look like every part of her body was telling her to run.

"Why would you try to protect this ghost?"

"I'm not, mum. I'm trying to tell you the truth, but neither of you are _listening_. What happened to just being glad that I'm home safe?"

The glare Maddie shot liquified Jazz's insides. "I don't know what we're going to do with you," Maddie sighed. "You know how much of a shock you gave us? We thought you were _dead_, Jasmine." We called the police! Not that they knew much about what to do when it comes to ghosts, spineless fools, but you can't just brush this off! I still love you, I will always love you. But if there's one thing I can't stand, it's being lied to by my very own daughter!"

Jazz melted into a sitting position on her bed. … That was a guilt trip she certainly could have done without.

For one of the few times in his life, however, Jack managed to be perceptive. "Hey, Jazz," he began, moving forward of his wife. "… Your mother and I have just been worried about you, how about we let this go for now?"

Jazz looked up, stunned at the advice her father was giving. But then, as he reopened his mouth, she realised that there was an ulterior motive. There was _always_ an ulterior motive.

"Besides, I bought a celebratory ham so that we could cook it the minute you returned!"

Yup, there it was. Marked naïvety with a dash of food that probably wasn't all that good for you. Jazz smirked, but only inwardly. And then, as if having been waiting for the exact opportune moment, her stomach growled angrily.

"When was the last time you ate?" Maddie asked, hesitating slightly. Jazz looked down at her feet.

"The ghost only had oranges."

"_Only had oranges_?" her mother repeated incredulously, but then seemed to settle on shaking her head in disbelief. "… You must be starving, I think I better fix you something to eat that will take a little less time than the ham… you just sit back and relax for a while, okay? I'll bring the food up for you."

"And I'll go and prepare the ham!" Jack declared. He was the first to disappear out of her bedroom.

Maddie lagged behind, until only her head was visible around the side of the door frame. "Jazz, I want you to think about what all of this could really mean, and just how much danger you were actually in. I'm sorry, we both love you so much… so please, just stay safe for us. I couldn't stand to lose you like-" but she cut herself off, picked up the discarded bazooka from Jazz's bedroom floor, and disappeared down the hall.

Jazz knew what she meant, though. _Like_ _Danny_.

She sat and thought about that, for a moment.

"Can I leave this infernal place, now?"

The Ghostwriter's muffled and rather annoyed voice had cut straight through Jazz's thoughts, and she looked down to see him crawling back out from underneath the bed anyway. It was perhaps the most undignified position she'd seen him in, and he didn't appear to be taking it particularly well.

"These bodies are useless!" he hissed. "And I have to remember to breathe, too! Do you have any idea how dusty it is under there?"

"Well, I have an idea…" Jazz admitted, guiltily trying to figure out when the last time she vacuumed was.

He gave her a cynical look over the rims of his glasses, as he pulled himself back up to a sitting position against the wall. But then he sank into yet another exasperated groan. "Oh look, back to nearly being blind again, I see. I am so going to enjoy wrapping my fingers around Technus' throat-"

Jazz was giving him a rather severe look, however, and he stopped right there, settling into just being irritable instead. The writer crossed his arms, took on a remarkably forceful, solid expression of utter annoyance, and went on to examine the rest of Jazz's room carefully through the lenses of his glasses.

"You know, mum will be back soon, and you're going to have to get back under the bed. Or you could try the closet, if you want some more room."

His brain seemed to click for a moment. "Anyone other than you," he declared, "and I would have suspected there to be a tired joke wrapped up in a euphemism."

"I don't really do euphemisms," she replied, flatly. "But you should probably pick one soon unless you want her to see you. It doesn't seem like you can move very quickly."

There was an odd expression on his face, but Jazz wasn't exactly sure what it was trying to convey. Nonetheless the Ghostwriter decided on the closet this time after all, and with Jazz's help managed to climb into a sitting position on top of an enclosed chest of draws, where he leant back against the inner wall. "Thank-you," he managed, beginning to clam down. "I… think I'm beginning to understand why astronauts come back with no sense of balance."

"Yeah, well hopefully you can relearn it pretty soon, because I don't think you can live in my wardrobe indefinitely while this accident wears off."

"There'll be a solution. Somehow."

Jazz regarded him sceptically. "Well, whatever. Get comfy. Don't knock any of the ecto-weapons with your feet, either. If you're not a ghost then they shouldn't hurt, but… it could be pretty messy."

The writer nodded.

And then she closed the door, returned to her bed, and waited.

But Maddie did not return within a few minutes, nor did she return in ten - it seemed that she wasn't going to come back at all, contrary to what she had said she would do.

This sort of discomfort, this waiting, could only go on for so long. The Ghostwriter pushed open the closet door slowly, hazardously, and looked around the room as if he were expecting to receive a chair to the face. Instead, Jazz just observed him amiably, sitting with her back up against the backboard of her bed.

"I don't think she's coming back," said the writer. "Is your mother normally so tardy?"

Jazz's eyes flicked to the bedroom door, but it showed no signs of motion or activity. "She's usually pretty prompt… and I'm really hungry, too."

There was a pause. The Ghostwriter appeared to be considering something in depth, eyes out of focus and gazing far beyond the wall they were pointed at. But other things were on Jazz's mind.

"… Before you sent me back here…" Jazz trailed, fidgeting. "It, well… when Mira grabbed me, I think I heard her thoughts."

She immediately had his full attention.

"She was screaming at me, for help. It made her sound like she was being possessed, like the reason she went crazy was because it wasn't actually her — she was being controlled."

"Controlled by _who_?"

"I don't… I was gone too fast, I didn't get to listen to the rest. It was a she, that's all I know."

The Ghostwriter seemed to consider this for a minute, going back to staring off into space. Jazz watched him carefully as he weighed this information up in his head, until he finally seemed to come back to earth.

"It makes sense," he began. "The way she changed, it was so sudden. As if someone had cut a few of the wires in her mind, and everything promptly began to malfunction. And while I know it wasn't possible for her to enter my library while I was away, I just haven't been able to shake the feeling that she had something to do with all of the missing scripts. So, if someone is controlling her, then presumably they are also controlling others, or they could even just… walk right in themselves, in my absence. God, nothing would have stopped them."

Jazz tapped her fingers together. "So you think I really did hear her? I wasn't just… I don't know, hallucinating?"

"I have very little doubt," said the writer, darkly. "To think that the script could effect you enough to do that, already… it must be something to do with you being human. Jasmine, do _not _wash off that ward on your arm. I don't know what'll happen if you do."

"You're serious?"

"Do I look like I'm joking?"

"No, but…" she looked away from him, and out of the window. Her nerves had really started up now, and her heart thumped away in her chest. "W-what if the ward fades over time, and you're still just human? What if we can't replace it? Or… or what if it was never effective in the first place, and this is just some sort of precursor to—"

"Shhh…"

"_How can I just shush,_ I—"

"_Jasmine_!" the Ghostwriter cut in, before she could get any further. "Did you see what Mira did? Teleport. Mira can teleport because it is her special ability; her shapeshifting trick is only possible due to the type of ghost she is. The special ability of a ghost is tied intrinsically to their core, and uses a different kind of energy to traditional ectoplasmic abilities. Even trapped in this ridiculous human body I still have a core, Jasmine, I can _feel _it. If the words begin to fade, I will replace them. And they will work."

Jazz's mouth wobbled more than she would have liked to admit, and she looked straight down at her bed. "Okay," she managed. "We'll… get through this."

The silence that followed wasn't particularly pleasant. It was broken, however, by an uncomfortable shuffling around on top of the chest of draws.

"Jasmine," he began, looking away awkwardly. She stared at him.

"… Yes?"

"It would seem that… how best to put this…"

"… _Yes_?"

"It would seem that I am required to consume some sort of sustenance. Food, as such."

"That's a rather roundabout way to say you're hungry," Jazz sighed, sitting forward and swinging her feet off the bed and onto the floor. "All right, stay there, okay? I'll bring you back something from downstairs in a few minutes, right after I check out what's taking them so long. Just remember to keep the wardrobe door closed."

"Yes, mother," said the Ghostwriter, obediently closing the wardrobe door again. But he wasn't done yet. "No oranges!" he commanded, voice muffled. "Nothing that even comes close to oranges! In fact, no lemons, either! Or limes! In fact, just avoid the whole citrus family altogether, please!"

Jazz mumbled a near-incomprehensible acknowledgement, and set about making her way downstairs.

The sounds of several voices floated up the stairway, a combination of excitement and curiosity entangled into their pitch. One of these voices very definitely didn't belong to Maddie or Jack - in fact, it was far more reminiscent… of Mira.

Jazz's pace tripled, in spite of near-crippling hunger. On her way past the doorway, she picked up a Fenton Bazooka that Maddie had so wisely hung on the umbrella stand, just in case of nasty surprises (which happened more often than anyone was willing to admit). It was almost too heavy for Jazz, but she wielded it over one shoulder anyway, careful not to turn and knock the walls or make too much sound. And then she crept forward, step by step, on the tips of her toes.

"—tell ya, it sure was interesting in there. Just wish there was an easy way back."

It was still definitely the right pitch for Mira's voice, but the accent had changed completely. Mira was now talking in full-blown cockney, which was a far cry from the typically Californian accent Jazz had known her to display. She was smooth at it, too - perhaps practiced, even. And the two ghost hunting parents were eating the story right up. Mira was a ghost hunter from Chiswick, London (apparently), who had accidentally stumbled upon a natural portal and fallen through it. Maddie in particular sounded transfixed by this information, and was asking barrels of questions about what Mira had seen in the Ghost Zone.

The information came out of Mira's mouth as fluidly as her new accent. Some of it was of questionable accuracy, but most of it Jazz knew to be quite true, both due to her own experience in the past few days, and what Danny had siphoned off to her in his own misadventures. Either there was something being plotted here, or Mira just didn't care.

_But the real Mira would care,_ said Jazz's brain. _And that Mira is locked up in her own head._

Jazz gave a guilty look towards the Fenton Bazooka. It probably wasn't going to do anything to a human version of Mira anyway, but even if it did she would be hurting someone who really didn't actually deserve to be hurt.

Not to mention, her parents would come close to disowning her if she shot.

Jazz put the Fenton Bazooka down, just around the corner from the kitchen entrance archway. And then she peered around timidly, waiting for her presence to be noticed.

"Jazz!" Maddie exclaimed, excitement barely contained. "Come here, this is incredible!"

Jazz did not say a word, and inched forwards. Mira was looking at her with a mild expression of amicable malice. It didn't seem to matter that amicable and malice were indeed antonyms of each other, because through some kind of witchery Mira had managed it anyway, and she sat in that kitchen chair like the impossible creature she was. Even if she, at least by all technical standards, was human.

"This woman, Mirabella, just exited the Ghost Zone through our portal. She was stranded in there for days, apparently, after accidentally falling through a natural portal in Britain," Maddie explained.

"Fascinating," said Jazz. Maddie clicked her tongue at such a blatant use of sarcasm, but then settled once more into a glowing grin.

"She'll be staying with us until she can find her way back to the UK."

A smile that should have been calming spread across Mira's face. "Pleased to meet you, Jasmine," she said, in the poshest form of cockney available. "I hope we can become good friends."

* * *

><p><strong>Author<strong>**'****s Note:  
><strong>Glad that's over. Could finally get back to writing fanfic/my novel now that my exams and the convention are over and done with. Back to updating things~

**Next Up:  
><strong>Ch. 9: Living in a House of Glass


	9. Living in a House of Glass

**Author****'****s Note:  
><strong>-takka takka takka-

To she-who-knows-who-she-is, how could I say no after an email like that?

To Crystal, mm, thank-you! I'm using not-so-popular characters, so the tiny reader base was something I predicted from the start — but that's okay! This is just a fun distraction, and a way to improve outside of Serious Writing. I do enjoy reviews when I get them though, so thanks!

To the mysterious and nameless guest to who I cannot reply directly, gosh, thank-you muchly! I was actually writing this chapter right as I got your review, so that was nice. Hopefully the rest of the fic lives up to expectations. Although I do unfortunately tend to go on long slumps and hiatuses, even if I am very determined to finish this. The ending and some future scenes are even already written out (even if not set in stone)!

* * *

><p><strong>Layman Scripts<br>**A fanfic by Pseudinymous

~ **9** ~  
><em>- Living in a House of Glass -<em>

* * *

><p>"Ah, I'm sorry! I'm still not quite so good on my feet yet. Twisted ankles are a killer."<p>

Jazz stared at Mira like she was an alien from another world. And in a way, Jazz supposed, she was. She might have looked human, she might have sounded human. She might have even been almost completely indistinguishable from human. But she was definitely a ghost, and the marked lack of balance proved it. Her attempt to get up and walk had been quickly thwarted and now she was back to sitting at the dining room table, one index finger twitching slightly upon the tablecloth.

"Don't worry! It's not a problem at all, you don't need to help me," Maddie reassured her. "You're in pretty good shape, frankly. I'm surprised the ghosts didn't just tear you apart in there — it's a wonder you escaped with just some spraining."

"A wonder, indeed," Jazz agreed quietly, although she definitely didn't share this sentiment for the same reasons as her mother.

Maddie busied herself in the kitchen, and there the three of them sat: the aspiring psychologist, the orange-clad ghost hunting father, and the frightening possessed ghost who was currently human (enough). The situation could have been a sitcom had it not been so dangerous, and the hazardous peace it exuded did more to shudder your spine than make you feel at ease.

Mira didn't keep her eyes on Jazz very much — instead her pale irises were off elsewhere and scanning the room, presumably taking in every possible exit point and item of potential use. She probably saw the Fenton daughter as some sort of bug, a glitch in the system, something to get in her way… or perhaps as a spider in a jar, something to toy with when the mood presented. Mira may have been harmless for now, but she still made Jazz feel as if in helpless free-fall. That she had managed to con both Maddie and Jack Fenton into believing the almost entirely unbelievable wasn't helping the matter.

Nothing quite compared to the almost-but-not-quite a death glare Jazz was giving Mira, however. She was determined to watch the "ghost" like a hawk, to the point where even Jack had noticed and seemed to be ill-at-ease with it. Maddie, however, seemed to be a long way off in her own world, too absorbed in what she was doing to pay any real attention.

"How many sugars in your coffee? Any milk?" Maddie asked, flitting about to the other side of the kitchen. Mira paused the visual exploration of her surroundings and took a moment to even reply.

"Um. … One sugar? And a bit of milk?" she hazarded, apparently trying to remember a long lost habit. "Do you… I mean I feel bad for asking, but do you have any marshmallows?"

Maddie's face lit up with a pleasant grin. "I do! I'll just get them."

"Wow… okay, thanks."

She bustled around the kitchen some more. Coffee began to brew in what could be considered one of the safer Fenton appliances, and finally she came to a halt while staring into the fridge, her expression thoughtful. "… It's been a while since I last went shopping, so we don't really have all that much food at the moment. How does blueberry pie sound? It was just a heat-up frozen one, but I do have some leftovers I could microwave."

"Microwave?" asked Mira, who was blinking unevenly at the idea. It was as if she'd never heard of one before. Maddie still wasn't catching on to her odd hesitations. "Uhh, okay, sounds neat."

"Good," Maddie said, firmly. "And Jazz? I'm sorry I got so distracted, I was going to get you some of this earlier. Would you like a slice?"

Jazz had to break out of her own train of panicked, angry thoughts to respond. "Uhh, yes," she said, trying hard not to sound too vacant. Jack gave her an inquisitive look from across the table, but didn't otherwise raise his suspicions further. She pretended not to notice.

"You're probably really tired…" Maddie continued, still unaware of the present death glare as she fussed about preparing things for her guest. "Sweetie, once I get the pie ready you can stay down here, but if you want to back to your room and rest-"

"-I'm going to go and lie down," Jazz finished, far too quickly. _Now _Maddie was joining in on those odd looks. And Mira was flashing Jazz a grin over the tabletop that could have meant anything in between '_I know what you__'__re thinking_' to '_I__'__m going to eat you alive and enjoy it_'.

The moment the plate was placed in front of her, Jazz was out of the dining room faster than either of her parents could scream the word _ghost_. Not a word was heard from her as she left, and she slipped around the corner so slickly that one might have been inclined to think she was never present at all. But the elegance was gone as soon as she was out of sight — she snatched up the enormous ecto-gun from around the corner and dragged it heavily up the hallway stairs as she went. Mira's new face was burned into her brain, now, and filed away neatly into the list of things that would haunt her nightmares.

… Even if that terrifying ghost was harmless for the moment, just what on earth was she going to _do_?

* * *

><p>The Ghostwriter's eyes misted over, and he looked at what was presented before him as if it might not be entirely real. As if it could have been some sort of great universal joke, waiting to bring him tumbling back to reality.<p>

But it _was _real.

The palpable sensation of warmth from the steam that billowed upwards could be felt as he hovered his hand over the plate. For the first time in quite a few years, he had his original senses back. It was like waking up from an extraordinarily long and vivid dream.

"… Hey. Are you okay?" came an inquisitive voice, which tickled the side of his brain and not much else.

Jazz was waiting patiently for him to respond, move, _do something_. But, even though he thought he would absolutely demolish the first thing he could eat, all he seemed capable of was staring at it as though it might pop out of existence the moment he picked up the fork. He'd never imagined blueberry pie to be so elusive.

"Writer…?" she ventured, again. "Seriously, you're starting to scare me."

He blinked. And then he looked at her right in the eyes just to acknowledge she was a Person Who Existed, and back down to the plate again. "I'm sorry," he began. "It's just… it's strange."

"All those years, huh?"

"There were quite a lot of them," the Ghostwriter replied, tapping his fork experimentally against the china.

Jazz left the plate with him, and finally decided to sit down at the end of her bed, facing the window. "It's like you're shy about it."

"Of course not!" he scoffed, but then as he hovered that fork back over the pie, he noticed a little butterfly of nervousness flit about in his stomach. Surely he wasn't so embarrassed to do something so human? Especially when, for now, he was one? Had so many years gone by that such things now seemed foreign and suspicious?

His hesitation over the dessert continued for another couple of seconds, until eventually sheer hunger took him and he could no longer expect to stop himself.

"Maybe it's worse, needing to sit for a few meals but then being forced back into never eating anything ever again…" Jazz mused. "Seems kind of cruel, honestly."

The writer stopped halfway through a mouthful of blueberries, swallowed sharply, and took in a deep breath of air that had been waiting patiently for at least half a minute. "I was really enjoying this up until I thought about that…" he mumbled, allowing a wistful little sigh at the end. "But, that's the way the universe works."

"It gets you addicted to blueberry pie and then prevents you from ever consuming it again?"

"No!" but he stopped, and gave her an uncomfortable look. "Well, _yes_, but that's not what I meant."

Jazz was casting that careful analytical stare to him again, and he noted just how penetrating it really was. "What did you mean, then?" she asked.

"I meant that the universe is really… it's really fickle. It can be quite happy to give you what you want, just… not exactly in the way you'd like to receive it. All we can do as people is make the most of the situation, really."

She tilted her head to the side, an action the writer noted she was quite fond of, and seemed to chew on the inside of her lip. "That was rather philosophical for dessert."

"I must be getting weird again…" he continued to mumble back, eyes falling back down to the now much emptier plate. "Huh."

When it became clear that Jazz had nothing more to say on the matter, the Ghostwriter finally resumed annihilating the food he'd been allowed. Jazz was fidgeting somewhere in the background of his mind, but he didn't take notice, not until the last bite was well and truly gone.

"… Writer, I'm sorry," she began, seeing that he had finished and gesturing to his place. "I was going to tell you earlier but you seemed so absorbed in… in that. But there's bad news."

This time he put the fork down completely and gave the girl his full attention. "What bad news?"

Jazz took a moment to ball her hands into fists, and stretch out her fingers again as she prepared herself to say it. "Spectra is in our kitchen."

It was like his brain had suddenly stopped working, clocked off, and gone home for the day. His eyes gained a vacant look, a thousand-yard stare. The fork nearly slid clean off the plate.

"… Writer?"

A beat.

And then he snapped. "_She__'__s in your kitchen_?!"

"Hey! Volume, remember?" Jazz urged in one of her quietest voices, not even trying to hide the cringe that taken most of the upper half of her body. "You can't yell like that! You'll get us both caught!"

"Uh… ehh…" he stammered back, before finally trying to reclaim some of his ailing tact. "… But why is she in your kitchen? What are your parents doing?"

Jazz's fidgeting had increased tenfold. "Apparently, entertaining her…" she told him, sickly. "They think she's a ghost hunter that fell out of the Ghost Zone from the UK. She's even speaking cockney!"

A dial had turned somewhere in the Ghostwriter's mind, and that was it. In several not-very-swift motions he breathed out slowly and deliberately, put the plate down on the draws he was sitting on, swung himself around, and then extended each of his legs to the floor. It took approximately three seconds to find himself falling straight back into the wardrobe draws again, and Jazz watched him with something between horror and amusement, one eyebrow cocked.

"And what exactly were you going to do?" she asked. "You're human, and my parents are down there with her. It's literally the worst combination you could ask for — at least in this case."

"But we have to do something!" he sputtered back, trying to look for decent handholds around Jazz's room, or really anything that might have been sturdy enough to lean himself against. "She's-"

"-Just about is incapacitated as you, actually," Jazz noted. "If mum hadn't caught her when she stood up, she would have fallen flat on her face. She's probably not _that _much of a threat to anyone at the moment."

"Yeah, at the moment!" he continued, trying slowly to right himself into something that vaguely resembled a standing position. "For God's sake, my knees are so weak… what are we going to do, Jasmine? We can't just sit here!"

And she thought about it. There weren't really many options left — in spite of being nearly incapable of doing anything on her own, Mira had woven an awful trap right around them and the rest of the Fenton family within an already bad situation and with only seconds to think it through. All the ghost would have to do was play the waiting game now, until the effects of the malfunctioning keyboard wore off. After that, she would be free to have whatever way she wanted with them…

Jazz had nearly doubled herself over as she thought, carefully biting down on her tongue before opening her mouth. "… Okay," she said, "She can't do anything for now. Currently the biggest risk is you being discovered, so we have to get you out of here."

"Which is a task and a half on its own, considering I can't walk," the Ghostwriter pointed out, looking towards his feet with a most irritated expression. "How are we dealing with that?"

"… I dunno… I'm thinking."

While she was mulling the dilemma over, the writer finally pushed himself forward very slowly and very carefully, until he could take a firm grasp on the end of her bed for support. Shakily, he managed to organise himself into a sitting position next to her on the edge of it. "Okay, first problem," he declared. "We have to get your parents out of the house somehow. Then you can… I don't know, drag me out of here, or something. But where do we go?"

Jazz's eyes were scrunched up in thought, now. "… Your keyboard's still in the Ghost Zone, right? Do you think if we went back there, you'd be able to fix this faster?"

"… The correct answer isn't '_I have no idea?_', is it?" he half-asked, looking guilty. "Honestly, if it's malfunctioning, then we risk making the entire situation much, much worse, really quickly. And I don't like the idea of travelling there as a human, either… even if you have a method of transport — which I assume your parents do, knowing them — if something happened to it then we could get stranded. Heaven forbid, if this malfunction never wore off we could even starve. We'd have to rely on asking passersby for help."

"… Ah." Jazz admitted, starting to look a little green at the thought. "So, we stay in this world then. At least I can drive, so that's not so much a problem… but we're back to square one on where to go. You need somewhere to sleep."

"Or maybe we just need to leave?" the Ghostwriter suggested. "The longer I'm here, the greater the risk. So maybe we just sort the rest out later."

She nodded in agreement, and took a breath. Jazz's brain whirred to life as she focused her gaze out the window, trying to sort out the problem. "We need a distraction," she said, drumming her fingers against the side of her face. "Something that'll get them out of the house completely. Mira's had plenty of time to raise the alarm about your presence, so it might be safe to assume that she's not going to. What do you think?"

"Well… it's a risk," he replied, carefully. "Although it's difficult to figure out _what__'__s _going on in Mira's head at any given point in time. Even before she changed, she was… a spontaneous person. She did what she felt like on a whim, even if it was obviously unwise. Her forward planning is much better now, but her spontaneity is the same."

Jazz looked away from the window. "Oh," she said. "_Great_."

They sat there and thought for a little longer.

"Maybe…" Jazz began, an idea steadily growing in her mind, "Just maybe…"

* * *

><p>Jazz tried to fight the urge to creep down the hallway stairs, and walked as normally as possible to the kitchen, plate in hand. Determination was firmly in mind but she tried to keep it out of her expression.<p>

After entering the dining room and kitchen area, she walked straight past Mira without even a second glance, and then straight past both of her parents, who paid her sparing attention at best. The plate was placed carefully on the sink to be washed, fork by its side, and she retrieved a knife to cut another slice of that delicious-looking blueberry pie. Maddie eyed her with a strange expression, but went back to rewiring one of the ecto-weapons at the kitchen bench as soon as she realised that the only thing Jazz was there for was seconds.

"Still hungry," Jazz grunted, grabbing was was far more technically her first piece of the dessert, and devoured it in seconds between her fingers. Maddie just shrugged.

"Have as much as you like, sweetie. But please try to save some room for the ham your father's cooking."

"Mmmhmm," the daughter managed back, hand covering a mouth brimming with blueberries. And then she swallowed. "I'm just going downstairs. I think I'm missing one of my ecto-guns. Couldn't find it in my closet."

"Oh, properly arming yourself from now on?" Maddie enquired, eyebrow quirked from underneath her crimson-lensed goggles. "Good. It's good to see you finally understand the danger you were in."

"Yeah… you're always right about this sort of thing, mum."

Maddie ate the compliment up. Surprisingly enough, however, Jack seemed less than convinced and Mira only looked as though she cared because more pie was missing. Jazz directed her attention away from the other kitchen inhabitants quickly, however, and started towards the basement stairs. No one stopped her.

If there was one thing she was truly thankful for, Jazz would have said it was Tucker's computer skills — or more accurately, his willingness to pass them on to her. After Danny had fallen, Team Phantom had collapsed in a way, and the three of them realised that without Danny to bind them together they were hardly forming a proper line of defence. To make matters worse, Tucker's family had taken themselves to plan a move interstate to Pennsylvania soon after, and every member realised that their time was limited to form a solid plan in case Everything Went Wrong.

Jazz lived in the Fenton household. Naturally, a lot of the weight had fallen to her shoulders.

So she had trained in ghost hunting. Not just under her parents, but with Sam and out solo as well, until many ghosts saw her as something of a demon and stayed well clear. Gone were the days of the Fenton Peeler, as although it was powerful, it was also difficult to move around in and the armour left a bit to be desired.

Tucker had taught her everything he could before he'd left. Jazz would never be him — he was essentially a prodigy, in her eyes — but she certainly knew her way around a hard drive, and her parents hadn't wised up with the latest security measures yet, either.

Jazz hurried down each of the basement stairs, listening to the clacks the metal made on contact with the souls of her shoes. It persistently smelt heavily of chlorine down here, something Jazz had attributed to the combination of hospital-grade cleaning supplies and large quantities of artificially created ectoplasm. But she ignored it, and dashed to the computer. She tried several passwords before one finally granted her access, each some combination of numbers and the words 'ghost', and 'fudge'. Her father really was a predictable man.

Now that she was logged in, the security system was right there. All she had to do was make it think it'd been tripped.

It didn't take long for stirring to be heard from above. Jazz deleted the change record and logged out to take a quick look through one of her mother's bottomless equipment draws, until she pulled out two very important items — the Fenton Inhibitor, a more-or-less projectile equivalent to the Plasmius Maximus, which Maddie had conned Vlad into allowing her to studying after she'd caught wind of the object's existence, and an ecto-gun with a great red painted stripe through the centre. Only luck had allowed these to be instantaneous finds rather than a wild goose chase, and Jazz thanked the stars as she leapt back up the basement stairs, two at a time.

Maddie and Jack had already left by the time she'd gotten to the kitchen, and Mira was sitting there with a stupefied expression encroaching upon otherwise attractive features. "They're gone," she said, and her face began to relax as she did away with the faked accent and returned to her normal manner of speaking. "I've never seen humans move that fast."

Jazz snorted. "We're not all as slow as you," she quipped, listening carefully for the sound of the car leaving the driveway — there it was! "I don't suppose this dose of humanity has done anything for you, has it? What about the Other Mira?"

"The _other _Mira?" asked the ghost, looking genuinely confused. "There's only one of me."

"But you're controlling her! Don't play dumb! Just who the hell are you?"

Shot back was an unpleasant smile. "I haven't the faintest clue what you're talking about. Your ghost friend might not be his brother, but it sounds like he sure is fond of telling fibs."

Mira was spinning her own lie, surely. What she was saying didn't match up with reality — Jazz had heard her thoughts, the thoughts of a person who was essentially paralysed and entrapped by this entity. Making Jazz doubt herself and the people around her was perhaps the only thing Mira was capable of right now, so on that front there would likely be no holding back.

Jazz's eyes narrowed, and fell to the floor. Quickly, she calculated how much distance was between herself and the ghost — enough to prevent the teleportation of her weapons, as it seemed. And then her eyes slid to the ecto-gun clutched firmly in her hand.

"Oh…?" said Mira, apparently bored with the gesture. "Honey, I thought you understood your job a little better than that. Your parents said themselves that they design their weapons specifically so that they aren't able to harm humans."

But Jazz's mouth warped into a smile that became more than opportunistic and nearly bordered on deranged. "Not this one," she declared. "This one's faulty. See the red strike on the side? Mum marks anything dangerous with it, and she's been complaining that this one does all sorts of interesting things to human flesh. Something about third degree burns and skin necrosis."

It was the first time she'd ever seen Mira flinch. "I'll teleport," she declared. "The moment you point that thing at me, I'll teleport!"

Jazz kept the gun pointed down, to her side. And, in what was perhaps the most fluid actions of deception she had ever managed, she flung her head to the side to look out the window, a small exclamation of surprise escaping her mouth as she did so. Mira looked too, instinctually. And as soon as she did, Jazz shot her with the Fenton Inhibitor.

The screeching was awful. An excessive amount of electricity arced through Mira's system, and she fell to the floor with an almighty crash. There was a slightly singed smell wafting around the kitchen, now, one that reminded Jazz too much of burnt toast — obviously, this weapon was not to be taken lightly. Mira's body twitched randomly from the shock as she lay on the floor, and she seemed to have lost great deal of motor control. Speaking, for example, didn't seem to be something she was capable of at the moment.

"You'll notice that your teleporting trick doesn't work anymore," Jazz declared. "_That__'__s _what happens when you mess with me, or you mess with anyone in my family! Now you're going to do everything I say, and you're going to follow my directions exactly — either that, or the electric shock I just gave you will be the least of your problems. Do you understand?"

Mira made a movement that was almost a nod, and Jazz took it as a satisfactory answer.

"I can't leave you here," she continued. "You're too dangerous for that. You're coming with me."

"… Where are we going…?" Mira managed, weakly. She didn't even bother trying to get up off the floor, although she likely wasn't able.

"Somewhere I can watch you. And when we get there, you're going to tell me everything I need to know about my brother, whether you like it or not."

Mira continued to lie there. Carefully, Jazz put the Fenton Inhibitor on the kitchen bench and hooked the malfunctioning ecto-gun to a clip on her belt, leaving both hands free. Approaching Mira, even a Mira that was completely unable to move, still felt like willingly walking into the jaws of a monster. At first Jazz kneeled down beside the almost-a-ghost and hesitated, wondering vaguely if something horrible was about to happen, but after a moment's stray thought she grabbed Mira by the shoulders and hoisted her up and over her own like a sack of potatoes. She was light for a person of her height, possibly even underweight. With all the training she'd been through, Jazz found herself using far less effort than she thought she'd need.

"… Strong…" Mira muttered, nearly unintelligibly, as Jazz moved her through the kitchen and into the garage. "… Didn't expect you to be strong…"

"Neither did I, when I was in high school…" Jazz muttered back, half in amusement and half in frustration. She leaned Mira against her car while she opened the back door, and then hauled the woman in. Mira didn't fight it, and Jazz had to wonder if that was because she was still too injured or weak from the shock, or whether she was feinting. "You stay there, got it?"

"Aye-aye…" said Mira.

"Good!"

Jazz slammed the door shut, locked the child lock on the car just in case, and bolted back through the kitchen. She snatched the Fenton Inhibitor on the way, nearly knocking it to the ground in the process, and bounded up the hallway staircase so quickly it was a wonder she didn't trip.

"All right, we have approximately ten minutes!" Jazz tried not to yell, but found she was anyway. Her Commanding Voice was on. "Are you ready?"

The Ghostwriter nodded a little awkwardly at first, and finished by quickly zipping up the bag full of ghost hunting equipment. "Sorry, I was curious."

"That's fine," Jazz continued, with little time to care. She immediately unzipped the bag again and hurled the Fenton Inhibitor in, then zipped it back up and hauled it over her right shoulder. She had to adjust her stance just to carry it without sustaining injury, and began to decide whether she could also stand to help the writer at the same time. Begrudgingly, she realised the stairs might be an issue. "I'll be right back, this thing's heavier than I thought."

By the time she reappeared, a few beads of sweat had condensed upon her brow. The Ghostwriter gave her a worried look. "Are you okay?" he asked.

"Fine!" she told him, apparently still in Action Mode. "Okay, your turn."

"My turn," said the writer, doubtfully. "You'll be all right, won't you?"

"Better than you, probably," Jazz sighed.

The walk downstairs was even worse than the initial stand up. Describing it as a staggered waddle was probably too elegant — the Ghostwriter was naturally very tall and Jazz really hadn't gained much in height since she was sixteen, making the whole affair probably one of the most awkward things either of them had managed. The stairs were the worst of it, however, and Jazz managed to coordinate him into the front seat of her car without teetering through some of the household plasterboard or accidentally bruising anyone.

"Hi," said Mira.

The Ghostwriter had frozen. He knew she'd be here, but he'd tried his best not to think about it up until now.

"Looks like we're both blending in with the native wildlife, this time," she managed, twinges of marked stress twitching at one of her eyes — the writer could see it through the rearview mirror. "Is this your first kidnapping, or are you a repeat offender?"

Jazz threw herself into the driver's seat and nearly hurled the malfunctioning ecto-gun at the writer. "If she tries anything while I'm driving, and I mean anything, shoot her," she directed. Mira gave them a bug-eyed look through the mirror. "Spectra, you aren't going to talk, and you aren't going to move. You are going to put that seatbelt on and sit there."

Silence.

"Nod your head if you understand!"

Mira nodded obediently, and strapped herself in.

The Ghostwriter looked down at the ecto-gun as Jazz began to start up her car, hand brushing over the bright red stripe of paint. "We must be insane…" he muttered, under his breath. "We must be completely and utterly insane."

* * *

><p><strong>Author<strong>**'****s Note:  
><strong>I'm going to be completely honest. The part where Jazz took Mira hostage was all her doing the driving (no pun intended?). It was definitely not the way this was meant to go. Time to adjust The Plan… ._.

I've always wanted to try blueberry pie, but here in Australia it's meat pies, chicken pies, or apple pies and nothing much else. :c

… Onward!


	10. The Balancing Act

**Author****'****s Note:  
><strong>This story gets such nice reactions. Makes me proud. :') And kind of giddy too, really. I really love you people. :3 (Pteradactyl, you'll be getting a response soon, sorry for my tardiness!) I'd really love to send messages back to anonymous reviews too, but alas, I can't. So simply, thank-you. :)

That moment when a 6,000 word chapter gets written in two days… I don't know how this happens, sometimes. I really don't.

We're finally up to Chapter 10! And we're about halfway through, too. I wonder if it'll take me another one and a half years to finish?

* * *

><p><strong>Layman Scripts<br>**A fanfic by Pseudinymous

~ **10** ~  
>- <em>The Balancing Act<em> -

* * *

><p>The phone rang, and it rang, and it rang. And then it went to message bank.<p>

Jazz hung up with a huff, and hastily tried to call her old friend again. The sheer illegality of using her phone while driving wasn't even coming to mind right now, that being the very least of her increasingly lengthy list of problems. Once more, the phone rang and it rang, and nothing happened.

"_Shit_," she said, more to herself than anyone else. "Sam, why won't you pick up?"

"Perhaps your friend is busy," the Ghostwriter suggested. "Does she need to have one of those things with her? Maybe she left it at home."

"It's 2013, no one leaves their phones at home," Jazz rallied, taking a corner turn far more sharply than was necessary. Mira seemed to be bracing herself in the back seat. Jazz tossed the phone to the side storage beside her own seat, and the writer peered over it, curiously.

"This is all new to me. Back in my day, phones were wired to your house."

"I know, I know. Seriously writer, you can have your nostalgia trip later. I need to drive."

His face twisted sardonically, but perhaps not biting back in such a situation was the safest idea. They might have been friendly with each other, but Jazz had proven herself rather deadly indeed, and he much preferred not being on the receiving end of that. Mira in particular didn't look as if she had fared well. Having been commanded not to speak, however, Mira just stared straight back at him, face unreadable, and probably mentally plotting some sort of genocide.

The Ghostwriter shuddered. If anyone could figure out how to end a ghost for good, it was probably her — or at least, her in her current state. Possessed, for lack of a better word, by a mysterious entity…

He returned his eyes to the road, and fretted over Jazz's frantic driving skills. Where she had learnt them was anyone's guess — perhaps a few years of ghost hunting had influenced them more than he could know. After all, when you were being chased at high speed by a flock of murderous ghosts looking for blood, you'd be insane not to drive that fast. Even if it felt terribly out of control.

… Out of control. That wasn't something the writer had felt since… well, not since That Day, of which he did not speak and seldom thought of. Human bodies are fragile things, after all, and it doesn't take much to—

A giggle from the back seat. The Ghostwriter's head turned slowly, bringing Mira into proper view. The slight of a smile had crept upon her mouth, and there it stayed, giving him a suggestive look. He wasn't quite sure what it was suggesting, but eventually, and against Jazz's very strict previous advice, Mira opened her mouth. "You're scared, Ghostwriter."

He said nothing. Her grin widened until it brightened both of her deep blue eyes.

"You're scared because you don't know what's going on, and you're scared because you don't know if this problem you've created is reversible or not. You hate being human."

Was this some sort of strange mind game? The writer's head fell a little. "And what is that to you? Why would you care?"

Her face was mocking sympathy. "Because I love you, with all my heart."

Oh yes. Sure. Of course she did. He rolled his eyes and shook his head and returned his field of vision to the road that was hurtling towards them at terrifying speed. Mira wasn't even playing a game anymore, just being frustratingly sarcastic, and it was all for the non-purpose of messing with him. It must have been the only thing she had left she could do, now that she was unable to use any of her powers and stuck in a car with a trigger-happy Fenton.

Though the writer dearly wished to, there wasn't anything he could realistically rally back with — not while Mira was in a mood like this. It was probably wiser on the whole simply not to speak. Jazz kept on driving, and he had an inkling that she was only tolerating the sound of Mira's voice because shooting and driving weren't a good combination for not accidentally killing everyone in the car.

Mira wasn't going to stop it there, however. Oh no. She had her shovel, and she was determined to dig her hole. "You could have saved me, Ghostwriter," she told him. "You could have had the Real Mira, but you gave up on her."

"_Shut up_!" he snapped.

Jazz jumped so high that some would have said she'd nearly joined the astronauts.

In spite of himself, the Ghostwriter continued, having been thrown into a rage. "You'll be quiet or I _will_ shoot you!"

Both sets of eyes were now firmly upon him, and he shrunk into his own seat at the unpleasant realisation of how he'd reacted. Was that still such a sore spot? And how had she _known_ it would get to him like that? Now Jazz was paying more attention to the writer through the mirror than she was to the road, and he understood with immediate dread the sorts of things that must have been running through her mind.

"You're a parasite living within the body of that poor woman," he spat at Mira, after some deliberation. "It's no one's fault but yours!"

She smiled, conceit etched into a face he painfully remembered from better times. "Ah, but you _could _have saved me. All you needed to do was, dare I say it, be more like her."

"_Oh my God_," Jazz cut in, having finally heard enough. "I'm trying to drive! Writer, if she speaks again, for God's sake shoot her or I will for you!"

That was enough to _actually_ keep her quiet. Jazz sighed with relief, and continued to drive as if other road users and things like signs and road rules didn't exist.

The Ghostwriter sat back in his seat, hardly relaxed as all sorts of awful things whirled about in his head.

… What if he _had _said yes all those years ago? Would events have unfolded such that Mira would never have sought to explore the Abyss? It was possible he could never know, not unless she returned to her old self again. But thirteen years had passed since she'd been normal, and he was losing hope that she could ever be restored. Once again, he was giving up on her — just in a completely different way.

His eyes felt heavy. They got like this when he wanted to cry in frustration, or just cry at all, but for a ghost this was an impossible task. But as a human it was nearly impossible to_ stop _the tears that were threatening to surface, and he was struggling to maintain control over himself. Gods, why _now_? Had he been by himself it might have been liberating, but here it was just a sign of weakness and distress which would allow Jazz a deeper insight into his head — something he wasn't quite comfortable with, yet.

Jazz said nothing, but nonetheless he could feel her eyes upon him. Watching, with a curious apprehension that would disappear in a few seconds, and then return again in half a minute's time.

The car was parked outside a mansion. Jazz attempted to call this Sam person once more, but when this was foiled for a third time she threw the phone into her pocket in disgust, nearly kicked the driver's side door open, and stomped out of her car with a huff. Her foot came down with a heavy thump on each of the stepping stones up to the house, where she rang the doorbell several times, knocked vigorously, and yelled blue murder up into the solid white walls.

Nearly a full minute passed before there was some kind of response. The door opened a creak. A woman with jet black hair — it _had _to have been dyed — and a pair of solid black sleeping things appeared in the doorway. Her head was wilted and her eyes drooping to the side, as if it was five in the morning.

3:30 in the afternoon, admittedly, was a little late for this sort of getup.

The Ghostwriter couldn't hear what they were saying, but it didn't take long for the gothic girl's face to fall into a worried frown, and she poked her head out of the door and peered into Jazz's car. Afterwards she pulled her face back in, and swung the door open properly. Jazz returned to her vehicle.

"How well do you think you can carry yourself?" she asked the writer. He looked down at his digits and thought about the last time he'd tried, when they had both nearly teetered through the plasterboard. It wasn't something he was keen on doing again, but part of him felt like it was more the awkwardness of using her for balance too much, rather than his jellied legs themselves.

"Perhaps… I'm not sure. I suppose we can find out," he griped, flicking the latch on the door and pulling one leg out. "Okay, now…"

In a slow movement he held onto the handle just inside the car and used it to draw himself up to his full height. His legs wobbled dangerously underneath him, threatening to collapse under his own weight, but be fought against that, straightening them until they were perfectly rigid. There he stood for nearly thirty seconds, trying desperately to remember what a human sense of balance was like.

Come to think of it, it was much easier to wake up one day and find that you were a ghost. At least you could _move_. It might have looked ridiculous, and he loathed to think of several situations where he'd found himself accidentally upside-down, but he'd generally ended up where he'd wanted to go. In the end, anyway.

He shuffled to the side, palming his way around the car to assist.

"Are you sure you're okay?" Jazz asked, worried lines forming on her face, but he shot back a determined nod and kept moving until he was positioned in a straight line to the door.

"I think so," he said, looking beyond the gate and into the worried violet eyes of this Sam girl. Slowly, he pulled himself away from the car, let his balance collect itself for several seconds, and began a very gradual and measured walk towards the mansion's front door. "Mmm," he mumbled. "Yeah, I think we're okay."

"That's a real geriatric shuffle you've got there," Sam remarked from the doorway, although at least she seemed more concerned than mocking.

Jazz, satisfied that a disaster wasn't about to happen, turned to Mira, who was jittering to herself in the back seat. "Right," said Jazz. Mira stared back with a catish gaze. The silence she got in reply told Jazz that she was going to be extracting words from the woman from here on out.

"How well can you move?" Jazz continued, her voice and expression sharpening, daring her adversary to put a foot out of line. Mira's head shrunk well into the leather.

"Well enough to put a seatbelt on," she replied, quietly. Jazz only needed to think for a couple of seconds before she made a beeline for the trunk of her car. Mira's eyes followed her all the way there. "What do you think you're doing?!" she began to demand, but Jazz didn't honour it with a reply.

The Fenton Inhibitor came out. Mira's eyes widened in horror.

"Oh God. No. Not that again. _No_!"

The grin that Jazz wore was quite unlike those of her past self. "Oh God," she mocked. "Yes, this again."

"No, no!" Mira continued. "I promise I can't walk well, please God don't shoot me with—"

"Then you will uncompromisingly follow my every command, Spectra."

And Mira nodded, in that strange mechanical way that horrified people did.

Jazz paraded her out of the car, allowed the not-ghost woman to lean upon her side while she held the Inhibitor to her head, and marched her towards Sam's front door. Sam regarded the spectacle with both humour and horror, probably thanking all of the lucky stars that very few people ever ventured into this cul-de-sac of a street, and stood aside.

The Ghostwriter watched them pass, and tried to remember that quickening his pace to match theirs was only going to end badly. Before he knew it, they had disappeared inside the house.

When the writer finally reached the doorstep, Sam the Gothic Woman regarded him with sympathy, before gesturing him into the hallway. The mansion was huge, and it reminded him in a vague way of his library — the real difference, of course, was that realistically no one would ever match his level of book ownership. For all practical purposes, it was getting to the point where the books owned _him_.

Jazz and Mira were already nowhere to be seen, Jazz having already whisked them off to a different room deeper within the house.

"So… you're actually a ghost," Sam began, closing the door behind. The mansion gave a dreadful echo from the noise. "But, there was an accident and now you're _not_?"

"More or less," he mumbled.

Now the girl was puzzled, brow knitted together in curiosity. "Doesn't it normally happen the other way around?"

The Ghostwriter breathed out a deep breath he hadn't realised he'd been holding as he walked, eyes scanning the unfamiliar building. "I like to think I'm not overly conventional."

"Hmm," said Sam. "Well, you're lucky, because I like unconventional." She began to walk in the direction of what the Ghostwriter thought was a kitchen, but with his limited point of view it could have been just about any sort of room. She began to elaborate. "Normally I don't trust ghosts — or _ex_ ghosts — but if Jazz thinks you're okay, that's enough for me."

He nodded, a little absently. "Speaking of her… where did she go?"

"A different room. She told me to tell you to stay here."

The writer had to double-take. "I'm sorry? Why would she say that? What's she doing with Mira?"

"The other ghost? Interrogating her, probably," said Sam, with a shrug. "Want some juice? I was just getting it out of the fridge when you all called in."

The contrast between the two topics hit the Ghostwriter's brain like a well-aimed brick (although, if he'd taken some time to think, he would have realised it was probably the reason she was heading to the kitchen-looking area). "Juice?" he stammered. "No, hang on, I want to know exactly what's—"

Sam cut him off there, offering a simple shake of her head. "Jazz said no. If she can place her trust in you, you can place your trust in her."

He found himself in a stunned silence. He stood there, legs still rigid, trying to figure out what he was supposed to be doing. Why were they in this house, anyway? Did this girl live all alone here? Was this where Jazz planned to house them? Was she extracting information from Mira, using whatever techniques she found necessary? Why hadn't she explained anything? He'd assumed something would come up when he'd gotten here, but to have her disappear with Mira like that—"

"Juice?" Sam repeated, looking bored. "I've got toast, too."

When he really thought about it, of course, that blueberry pie hadn't exactly filled him up. And it wasn't like he was likely to enjoy these human privileges for much longer, assuming nothing went _too _wrong. It was perfectly normal to have a weakness like this. Hell, it was playing to Jazz's advantage, which was almost certainly good — just not for his curiosity, or his anxiety.

The Ghostwriter seemed to deflate. "… That… that sounds okay."

* * *

><p>Sam the Gothic Woman turned out to be a person he had gradually forgotten. He only began to remember her after exchanging conversation for just over twenty minutes, and the Ghostwriter felt a little bit stupid, now, because it was ever so clear that this was the Phantom boy's best friend. Not to mention his almost-but-not-quite lover, and in an odd and disconnected way, his widower. She held herself as someone who had carried the loss in stride — almost as if she'd half expected disaster from the beginning — but never out of memory, and she drooped with the cancer of vanished hope.<p>

He didn't mention the row he and Phantom had entertained a few years ago, from which his memory of her had originated. Unlike Jazz, Sam didn't need to know.

Hours passed and still Jazz did not emerge from the room. Sam continued her insistence that this was going to take a while, and Jazz knew exactly what she was doing — something that irritated the writer on a deep internal level, because even if he trusted Jazz, it didn't mean he didn't worry for her. As he and Sam spoke his desperation led to an attempt at intangibility while his hands were hidden from view under the table, but with a human body it was useless — it couldn't facilitate ectoplasm use or flow, and he was left with two very tangible human hands and an increasing feeling of frustration. There was a time many years ago when he would have welcomed this change.

But not now. Not anymore. Now it was just problems and more problems, and like being locked in a strange sort of prison.

Sam had eventually decided that everything was taking a little longer than she had thought, and showed him to a spare room. It was furnished sparsely but did contain a bed and a bookshelf, which was mostly empty with the exception of five books stacked on top of each other at waist height. When Sam had disappeared off to some other area of the house (he had lost track of all the areas of the house already, as he really only had bearings for his own library), the Ghostwriter took the first book off the top of the stack, titled "Modern Rituals of the Orient". It wasn't a topic he was overly enthralled with, but he laid himself down on the bed anyway, resting some _very _tired muscles and joints, and began to read.

After half an hour, however, he realised he was only ten pages in and he'd just had to read the same paragraph five times over. His mind was far too preoccupied with the current circumstances to focus, and so he placed the book on the floor just underneath the bed and pulled out a pen and paper from his pocket instead. Maybe writing would be more successful today.

But, as with his last attempt, the page remained frightfully blank. In the end he resigned himself to staring idly upwards, unable to rest or relax.

"Maybe I'll get my power back soon," he told the silence above him, as if speaking aloud would predestine such luck.

Of course, nothing happened. Today wasn't a good day.

Day turned to night. The sun sank into the horizon with a vivid celestial display of orange and pink, colouring the skies in beautiful pastel tones and turning gold the few clouds that still hung there. He got off the bed to watch that, wobbled himself over to the window, and kneeled down in front of it. The warmth of this setting sun left a pleasant tingle on his face, and he enjoyed it until it was gone.

Stars trickled onto the skyline. He griped at yet another missed opportunity to drift among them properly.

After so many hours, finally, _finally_ the door opened. It was a slow, hesitant open, as if the person on the other side was nervous about doing so, and from his position on the floor the Ghostwriter turned his head to look. Jazz inched her way through quietly, her eyes falling upon him and then flicking back up to the star scape beyond the window.

"I didn't want you to see that," she said, softly.

"The night sky? Why not?"

"No, Mira."

It was only then that he truly noticed the solemness etched into Jazz's face, as if she had just done some things she truly wasn't proud of. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he realised he had drawn a breath and forgotten to let it go.

"She's unconscious, now," Jazz elaborated, shifting awkwardly on her feet. "Her teleportation powers could have come back at any moment, so I had to shock her again, but it was more than she could handle. She passed out."

There was something clinical about the way she was speaking. There was guilt in her voice, but also a robotic knowledge that she did what she thought had to be done. When the writer offered no reply, she shifted again and sat down in front of him, crossing her legs on the hardwood floor.

"She almost told me what happened to Danny. I was so_ close_."

Something panged deep inside of him. "You tried to torture the information out of her?"

The guilt she felt was clear, now — Jazz would have learnt many things from her parents, and knowing that they weren't above such things as torture, perhaps in her years she had learnt some techniques of her own. "I didn't want you to see that," she managed. "I mean… well, you never said it explicitly, but it sort of seems like you were more than friends with her, once…"

The silence could have filled a void with the sheer intensity of its nothingness. This time the Ghostwriter shifted uncomfortably, and he looked away at the empty bookshelves instead.

"Were you?" she asked.

"It wasn't quite like that…" he replied, chest frozen.

"Well…?"

This girl really didn't understand where her enquiries should stop and where his privacy should begin, did she? Maybe that's what shrinks did for a living, though, and if she was aspiring to be one she had probably taught herself to pry at people's inner thoughts with unmatched efficiency. He puzzled over himself, drew a line through the dust on the floor with an index finger, and thought about how best to put it into words.

"… It was many years ago. I guess — well, I guess we courted. She was more enthusiastic about the idea than I was, really… she reminded me too much of my sister."

Jazz's mouth had made an _o _shape, and he thought she was going to stop her enquiry there, but apparently she wasn't quite done. "So… you still cared a lot about her, then."

He paused. "Yes."

She nodded slowly, and drew her own little line in the dust. "I know she's still in there, somewhere. I held back as much as I could, but I think this might be the only way we'll ever find out how to get either of them back."

He didn't tell Jazz that it broke his heart to think that Mira was trapped in there, in pain but powerless to do anything about it. Those words sliced through his mind, again — he could have saved her. Even if he never would have been able to see any of this coming, _he could have saved her_.

Desperately, he wished this could all be over, and that Mira could be Mira again. What else had she been forced to endure during her hellish time of possession? Who had she been forced to hurt, be hurt by?

"I don't suppose you had any more convenient mind-reading moments?" the Ghostwriter sighed.

Jazz shook her head. "That'd be too easy, wouldn't it?"

"It would."

They didn't seem to know what else to say, and sat in an unsettling quiet for some time afterwards. Eventually the Ghostwriter picked himself up off the floor and laid down on the bed again, staring off into the unknown space beyond the room's lone bookshelf. "I can't write," he told the world around him, as difficult as those words were to say aloud. He let them hang in the air, and Jazz took notice.

"You've got writer's block?"

Not an inaccurate description. He frowned at the idea, but conceded to it.

"Since these events have begun to unravel as they have…" he told her, carefully. "Since I left the Ghost Zone for the first time. Although perhaps I could be more concise by saying it's since I met you."

Jazz reeled, taken aback by this revelation. "You can't write anything… because of me?"

"No, I can't write anything because of me," he clarified.

"But that doesn't make any sense…"

"Just because you can't see the sense doesn't mean it isn't there."

The girl tipped her head to the side thinking about this, and seemed to come to her own non-conclusions about it. "Did I do something? What are you implying?"

Oh, why had he gone and said anything at all? What was he thinking? My God, he could have some awful ideas sometimes. Even with the power to control reality, somehow his existence was more problematic than he had ever wanted, which truly bothered him. No matter what he did something would still always become out of control, out of reach, out of sensibility…

He looked at her. She was hurt. She had done something today that seemed truly outside of her range of values, and she was trying to hide that she was affected by that. Perhaps his observation skills had become better simply by being around her, as he remembered a recent time when this sort of thing would have flown cleanly over his head. If he was her, what would he be thinking? Would he hate himself for his actions? Worry that admitting them could lose an ally, a friend?

… But she was also strong, strong enough to do what had to be done even at the expense of her own sanity, and strong enough to openly admit she had done it in the end, in spite of the consequences that may have followed. She had resolve. When images of Mira struggling inside of herself didn't come to mind, Jazz's desire to save not just her own brother but Mira too occupied it instead. She hadn't just been interrogating Mira for information on Phantom, she had been interrogating Mira for information on Mira.

…

"I'm really sorry."

Jazz's words sounded hollow. His expression softened for her, though he did not smile. "I wouldn't have known a better way, either. I think you did what you needed to do."

There was another pause.

"… You don't think I'm despicable?" she asked.

And he shook his head, setting his glasses askew as his face was resting on the pillow. He readjusted them swiftly. "You haven't had a normal life. You learnt the hard way that there's things you have to do, whether it puts people in harm's way or not. Life is full of decisions like that, some with serious consequences. You seem to understand the weight of what you do, and why it must be done."

She nodded, slowly. He wasn't sure it was in agreement, but in the end he supposed it didn't matter. She didn't need to believe it, she just had to hear it.

Jazz thought on this, before coming to a conclusion. "… That's enough for tonight," she determined. "Mira's secured, and Sam stays up all hours of the night anyway… she'll watch Mira. I'm going to get something to eat and go to sleep."

"It's still quite early in the —" the writer began, but then he took notice of the bags under Jazz's eyes, which probably didn't have as much to do with overtiredness as they did stress. "Actually, let's do that."

* * *

><p>They had dinner together, derived from the smorgasbord of leftovers contained within Sam's fridge. But going to sleep was a plan that never quite happened.<p>

"Do you think everything will work out in the end?"

The question hung in the air as if held up by some invisible source. The Ghostwriter didn't stop staring out of the window to answer. "… I don't know, Jasmine," he told her, honestly. "We have a lot of problems."

Jazz shuffled up to the window as well, taking a seat by his side.

"There is Mira, for one…" he began to list, eyes still unfocused. "And your brother. The script you touched. The other scripts, which of course went missing. Your parents. My keyboard. My… _humanity_. The entity that seems to be possessing Mira, if we can remove it from her at all. And all of this is connected, if not through itself then through the two of us."

"That doesn't fill me with confidence," she commented.

The half-moon had made its appearance through the window frame, balancing haphazardly above someone's chimney.

"There's nothing we should do until morning, I think. Maybe you could try writing, if you're so intent on not going to bed."

"Writing?" she double-took, and he supposed that was relatively justified considering the idea had come from nowhere. "No… I'm no good at that."

"Well… it's good stress relief, you know. Doesn't really matter how good you are — no one has to see it."

Jazz fell silent a little longer, twiddling her thumbs. The steady light from the streets shone into her face, illuminating it oddly as she thought.

"I wouldn't know where to start," she declared. "What would I even write about?"

"Well, what can you see?" asked the writer. "What can you hear, feel, touch? What is the smell that drifts through the air, if any at all? Is someone with you? Maybe you aren't you — if not, what is your name? What is your personality like? How do you feel about the smell of the mist and the fog at five in the morning? What are your ambitions, who are your allies, what are the challenges to overcome?"

She shook her head, almost violently. "I don't know all of that!"

"You don't need to. That's a puzzle that you can put together gradually. You only need one thing to start, and the rest you can discover as you go."

Jazz regarded him with scepticism, but before she could say anything the Ghostwriter had pulled a pen and notepad out of his pocket. "They're there if you want to use them," he said, holding them in front of her face. "God knows I won't miss them. I could stare at a blank page for hours right now and all it might achieve is a piece of meaningless scribble in the top-left margin."

A smirk. It was small, but gave a slight curl to the edge of her mouth. Now she seemed to be deliberating it, and she looked at him and asked, "You really are insistent, aren't you?" But she decided to accept the offer, and took the tools from his hands. "Is this what happens when you can't write? You try to indoctrinate others into your never-ending hobby?"

A short pause. "Well…" he managed. "Normally there aren't exactly others to indoctrinate."

In spite of her reservations, however, Jazz did begin to write. He wasn't sure about what — she was completely against showing anyone, and seemed justified in this feeling by saying she wouldn't be good enough. But it did at least seem to distract her from having a major internal meltdown. That was a positive.

Eight o'clock turned to nine o'clock. Jazz had been writing for well over an hour. By this point the Ghostwriter was growing tired and bored, and he laid back down on the bed that had been provided for him and stared aimlessly off into space, his mind whirling troubling thoughts around like a washing machine stuck on cycle. It was calming to see her so focused, though, when he decided to look. He felt bad for keeping his eyes on her so continuously though, and removed his gaze when he felt it might be too much. She continued to sit there, cross-legged on the floor, penning something. Maybe she was unaware.

And then — something strange. He'd nearly fallen asleep by the time it happened, but something shifted inside of him, something to do with his core, and he came to the realisation that he was no longer cursed with humanity. Jazz noticed too — the glow had made its return, along with everything else that stopped him from passing off as just some random when walking around on the street. The Ghostwriter sat up quickly.

"It wore off after all," Jazz noted, one brow sunken. "I guess that's one issue solved."

But the writer wasn't convinced. He stood up as a test, found that this was no longer a million-dollar challenge, but sat back down on the bed again anyway. "This is odd," he declared, now reaching an intangible arm through a wall just to check that that worked again, too. "Really odd."

"Yeah, odd if you're alive," Jazz pointed out. "Looks pretty normal for a ghost."

"Actually, it's odd because I expected to be stuck this way for a few days. I mean… don't get me wrong, I'm glad, but this is out of place," he paused a moment, retracting his arm, and had a realisation. "Gods, you've got Mira held securely, haven't you?"

"Sam has a massive soundproof room filled with Fenton tech. She isn't going anywhere as long as she can't teleport, and Sam will make _sure _of that."

The Ghostwriter relaxed a little. "Okay. Okay, good. Maybe being human for a little while was worth it, then. This Sam girl, she used to help your brother out with ghost hunting?"

Jazz nodded, tapping the pen against the notepad he had given her and then closing it for the night. "She did. She's better at it than both of my parents — or at least she was back when she did it all the time…"

"So now that job falls almost squarely on you," he commented. Jazz gave another sad little nod, and sank her head into her hands.

"Lots of things have changed since Danny fell asleep. Prevention is better than cure, especially when you don't have the cure anymore."

Tiredness still flicked at the Ghostwriter's core. He stood again, stretching out his fingers and toes as he went, and took to her side. "It's starting to get late, now. Maybe it's time for you to go to bed? We might have a better lead than just that old shack, tomorrow."

"Mmm…" said Jazz, and he could hear the sleepiness in her voice, even. She got to her feet, still holding the pen and notepad tightly — he didn't ask for them back, he had plenty more where they'd come from, after all — and started towards the door. "I guess I should at least check my phone… had it off so my folks couldn't call me. Would've been pretty awkward…"

Jazz turned her phone back on, but stopped midway through the doorframe. The Ghostwriter nearly bumped into her, but stopped just in time.

It was as if her heart had stopped, or as if she was having some sort of minor seizure. For nearly half a minute she barely moved and offered no explanation at all, but the longer she stood there staring at the screen, the more laboured her breathing became. Finally, the Ghostwriter peered over her shoulder, and suddenly he understood why.

— _SENT 23 MINUTES AGO __—_

_Jazz we don__'__t know what__'__s happening! Please answer the phone! We__'__re going to go to the house on Boundary to look__… __please just answer! Is it a ghost? What happened to you and Mirabella?! I love you sweetie__… __If you__'__re in the boundary house stay calm and do whatever you can to get out of there! We__'__re coming to get you! xoxoxo -Mom and Dad_

"_Christ,_" said the Ghostwriter.

Jazz just continued staring. Eventually, the phone slid straight out of her hand.

* * *

><p><strong>Author<strong>**'****s Note:  
><strong>Plotting this story is like a challenge to write myself in and out of corners, while still somehow managing to make everything even more complicated. Apparently when I write I don't magically fix any of the character's problems without turning them into something else even more troublesome. That should keep you all feeling confident!

Next chapter will be big. _Huge_. But not necessarily in length.

To those of you who are tagging along for the long-haul, thank-you so much. It always makes me happy to see the stats of this story as I write it and note that people are still reading along and (hopefully) enjoying it even after nearly 50,000k words and one and a half years.

Reviews don't keep me going — I'll finish this anyway reviews or not — but I cannot describe how much I appreciate them when I get them. Please tell me what you liked, what you didn't like, and help me become a better writer. :3

-Sudo

**Next Up:  
><strong>Chapter 11: The Script of Cause and Effect


	11. The Blinding White

**Author's Note:**

Oh, I'm back rather soon this time.

Also, I accidentally lied. This chapter got a name change after these events took more words than I thought they would, thus pushing the latter content back to the chapter after this one.

* * *

><p><strong>Layman Scripts<br>**A fanfic by Pseudinymous

~ **11** ~  
>- <em>The Blinding White<em> -

* * *

><p>Ecto-guns, as the Ghostwriter had soon discovered, did not need to be especially large to do despicable amounts of damage. "Be careful with this one!" Jazz had said, thrusting the unwelcome object into his quite unwilling hands. "It can take out a wall."<p>

A wall? He supposed that when you had Fentons involved, anything less was probably just the warm-up. Oh, was this ever going to be _good_ — no weapons training, no combat training, and absolutely no faith that the poor wall in question was ever going to survive. How did he get himself into these situations again? No idea? They just seemed to happen to him and follow him around like lost puppies? Of course. Of. Course.

Jazz was able to drive almost as fast as he could fly, and so they had split. He didn't want to be in the car when inevitability lead to its eventual and entirely ungraceful arc into an innocent street pole, and in any case she probably didn't want to hear too much more of his 'whinging' (common sense), either. Now he was tracking her vehicle, hidden behind a protective cloak of invisibility, wondering whether it would be better for everyone if he just ran off here. Not only were they on a rescue mission to what could be one of the most dangerous houses this side of the US, they were also about to be rescuing two of the most famous Ghost Hunters in the Ghost Zone. Who happened to think he was human, and who weren't going to be happy when they discovered otherwise.

Why did he have to leave that wristband device sitting on the table in his library? Why hadn't he just kept it in his pocket? There was no hiding his ghostly nature without that thing. He was just going to have to crash the party and reveal himself.

"I hate _everything_," the Ghostwriter moaned, although his lament was lost to the breeze.

Jazz's driving looked equally erratic from above as it had felt when he'd been stuck inside her car. The turns were sharp, the straights were fast, and somewhere in the back of his mind, the Ghostwriter had to wonder if she had obtained some sort of permit to drive like that. Perhaps her services to the broader community meant she could get away with such delinquency. Or perhaps, more likely, no one was quite good enough to catch her.

Several more thoughts of fleeing had crossed the writer's mind as they approached Boundary Road, but the more he thought about it, the more he realised that he just couldn't do that. However much his stomach turned at the idea of bravery, he felt… as if she was deserving of the help. And besides, there was still the mystery of Mira, a topic this place could potentially provide some clarity on. Well, maybe. Or probably not, really. It was probably just full of traps.

The house on Boundary Road had been described in carefully exact terms — a shack, abandoned, frightening, and definitely looking as though it hosted some sort of malevolent creature from the realms beyond. Probably there was only space enough for one room. It seemed Mira had gone well out of her way to select the scariest (and smallest) abandoned building in Amity Park, which might have been an attempt to keep the locals away, but which might have also been an attempt to attract the local ghost hunting community. Was it possible people had already gone missing, here? It was an ominous thought.

Parked just on the curb outside was an empty RV with the Fenton's obnoxious green logo. The ghost hunting parents had beaten them there, probably by a good twenty minutes, and the Ghostwriter could see no part of this going well. He landed by Jazz's car, parked just ahead of the RV, and gave her a significant look. Jazz didn't seem to catch it. Perhaps the view through those strange, all-seeing contacts wasn't as clear as she might have liked others to think.

"Stay invisible," Jazz instructed, popping open the trunk of her car and pulling several different items from The Most Dangerous Bag in Existence. A strap, which held three glowing knives of various lengths tucked into leather slots. An ecto-gun, of the same make and model as the one she had given him. Some sort of cylindrical device that looked as though it was far more invested in holding soup, and hadn't really signed up for all of this ghost-hunting business thank-you very much. And… well, he didn't even _know _what that was. It was shaped like a police baton but the mechanical appearance meant that this would have been a grave misunderstanding.

The writer could feel himself getting more bug-eyed by the second.

Jazz finished this terrifying display with an ecto-weapon not dissimilar to a shotgun. It was long and sturdy enough that hitting things with it might have been equally as effective as shooting them, and sported enough dints to suggest it had taken such inelegant techniques in stride at least twice before.

"Okay," Jazz breathed, sounding not-at-all confident. "This might be it. Do you think you can handle another weapon, or is that enough?"

The Ghostwriter made a dreadful choking sound that just wasn't anatomically possible for a living human being. It was formed theoretically by squeezing individual molecules of air through quite unwilling spectral lungs, although he had never been sure about this sort of thing. "Another one?" he stammered. "I'm still terrified I'm going to accidentally kill myself with this one!"

"_Kill_ yourself?"

"Figure of speech," the Ghostwriter hissed back.

Jazz seemed to take it in stride, somehow. "It'll be okay. You just have to stay as calm as you can about using it — point and shoot."

"It's easy to say that when you've had training. I've never even fired a gun before," he continued in his lament. "I'm not sure about this, Jasmine. This is dangerous. I feel like we're being toyed with."

There was a flicker of fear on her face, now, which she quickly hid. "I know." A pause. "You don't have to come with me, you know. It's not your fight."

But she was wrong. It _was _his fight. Mira was involved. If he didn't feel like he had a duty to help Jazz, then he certainly felt like he had a duty to help Mira. Everything about this, in a strange and disconnected sort of way, seemed to revolve around the two of them. The shack was an odd centre point.

Eventually, the Ghostwriter stole himself from his dread. "No, it's important for both of us. Both of us have business in there. Yours is just more immediate."

Jazz didn't say anything.

Truth be told, the writer didn't know what he was going to do with one weapon, let along multiples. Having that keyboard right now would have been a nice luxury — in fact, this entire situation could have been _easy_ with it.

If Phantom ever woke up from that coma, oh, would the Ghostwriter ever have _words_ with him. All the troubles that could have been avoided without that simple act of aggression…

"… C'mon," said Jazz, eventually coming to the conclusion that arming herself any further would probably be counterproductive. "I think we should go around the back."

He thought about it. From a human perspective it was a logical enough course of action, and he humoured her idea until they were halfway around the side of the house. But then he tugged gently on the side of her skivvy, in a motion to stop.

"If you really want to give them a surprise, I say we don't walk in blindly through one of the main entrances," the Ghostwriter suggested. "I think we should go underground and come up through the floor."

There was some genuine deliberation on Jazz's part. She quietly tapped her foot as she contemplated the idea, before deciding on something. "You're right. But it means we have to be ready for anything the moment we resurface."

"I know."

Jazz looked up at the building, and gave a cold little shudder. "Well… do you think we'll be all right?"

"It's our best shot," the Ghostwriter offered. "They'll be expecting ghost hunters through the doors, but not from underneath."

Finally, she came to a nod. "… Okay. When you're ready, let's do it. Just be careful, okay?"

"You too."

It was time. This was something that had to be done if they were seeking to find both of Jazz's parents alive (although probably not exactly well), and stalling here wasn't going to help matters. He took her firmly by the waist, spread intangibility throughout the both of them, and sank into the ground.

Flying underground was something the Ghostwriter had never done before, but it was just as dark and suffocating as he'd thought it would be. You couldn't see anything for the solid matter right up against your eyes, and not a single dapple of light filtered down from the surface. Disorientation could happen in seconds unless you were well attuned to every movement you made, and sound didn't carry at all. He could have opened his mouth to say something, but Jazz never would have been able to hear it. In and of itself, this was terrifying.

Nevertheless, he persevered.

Coming to a point where he believed he was just underneath the house, he began to move upwards. They burst out into the relative open of a rundown living room, and it would have looked very strange indeed to Maddie and Jack Fenton, who were tied up to a wall-mounted radiator and quite unable to move. They tracked the writer with terrified eyes even as he let Jazz straight down, her body resolidifying in an instant. He was going to curse the creation of those all-seeing contact lenses.

With no time to soak up the atmosphere, however, Jazz had already gotten to work by making a perfect landing, standard ecto-gun and shotgun already out. The table in the middle of the room creaked slightly, for an unknown reason. And then, quite suddenly, calling it a table would have been a gross misrepresentation of the truth — you would have been better off calling it three trillion little bits of table, or, for preference, firewood. Jazz's ecto-shotgun let out a slight sizzling sound, proud of its handiwork.

There hadn't been anything there, of course. But the girl had reached a new level of tension known almost exclusively to those few who had experienced firsthand exactly why you shouldn't put a knife into a toaster. Her muscles twitched underneath her skin as she waited to react to anything and everything that the house could throw at her, but it was strangely… silent.

… Where was the fanfare? The terror? The relentless and unforgiving traps that Present Day Mira was so fond of? And it wasn't like her to be sneaky about it, either — the traps didn't hide away until you fell for them. More, they made their presence known just enough that you had a chance to run, and then chased you down and ate you alive.

It was yet another thing for the growing list of oddities. Yet another situation that was truly out of place.

Thinking himself safe at least for now, the Ghostwriter turned to the Fenton parents. Both of them were gagged, unable to make much of an expression aside from the sort of horrified shock one gets when one is bound, gagged, and then sees a ghost, and were otherwise so well tied to the radiator that unassisted escape was going to be impossible.

"… I'll let them down," he murmured to Jazz, who was ready to bring hell's fury on even the most insignificant falling dust mite. "Just… cover me, I suppose?"

"Got it."

But all remained calm. Suspicion was laid deep within the writer's mind, and as he got closer to the radiator, he wondered more and more if the trap was actually the Fentons themselves. He examined it closely — much to their obvious discomfort — before deciding he would at least phase off both of their gags.

A slew of words that had been building up over the past thirty seconds poured from their mouths, at least a few of those being "ghost", "what", and "I will tear you apart molecule-by-molecule". The Ghostwriter gave them a twisted, unhappy look as he dropped the invisibility — it wasn't exactly the welcoming he'd been hoping for.

"Or," he told them bitterly, "Perhaps rather than rescuing the pair of you, I will just leave you here, and whoever did this can have their way with you."

The soup of words flowed to an end.

"Hey!" said Jazz. "Come on…"

"I'm only trying to get them to stop and think," the Ghostwriter shot back. "They probably want to skin me."

Eventually, Maddie seemed to reclaim her voice, ignoring the comment about the skinning. "John was _human_!" she stammered, eyes bulging. "Since when—"

"Please!" said the Ghostwriter, sagging midair and trying to stop his eyes rolling as he examined the radiator a little more closely. "Do you want to know the truth? I was _always _a ghost. Like most people, however, I appreciate not having three hundred holes shot in me, so I pretended not to be. _My name isn't even John_. In any case, if you truly want to live, can you just cut me some slack here so your daughter and I can save you?"

Jack looked about to say something, but stopped quickly. Maddie on the other hand was well and truly told, and had receded as far as she could into the metal apparatus behind her.

"Writer, c'mon! We've got to get out of here before something happens!" Jazz called back, and he gave her a desperate little nod now that he was at least convinced he wasn't gong to be tied up and experimented upon the moment this rescue mission was done.

But one problem remained.

"Okay… okay," he began, calming down a little. "The two of you, this thing that you're tied to, is it some sort of trap? Who tied you to it?"

There was a pause. Jack rediscovered his words. "She said anyone who untied us would be killed. But she didn't say how."

The sound of his voice was haunting. Jack Fenton was another the Ghostwriter had had a one-sided meeting with through his squabble with Phantom, and the man's usually childish demeanour seemed quite replaced with true terror. The _she _part was interesting, though. The writer gave them both an inquisitive look. "_She_? Who is _she_?"

"The ghost who kidnapped Jazz."

Jazz almost dropped one of her weapons. "_What_?"

Oh, now _this _was going to be awkward.

"Jazz, this is the one who kidnapped you! She even admitted to it right to our faces!" Maddie urged. "Now look what she's done to us! Doesn't seem so much like 'just lonely' to me!"

There was silence for a short while. The Ghostwriter pretended fiercely that no one else was in the room, and peered a little closer at the metal bars. Just beyond them there was something stuck in there, something —

"Erm… y-yeah, about that. Might have lied about that," Jazz managed, still playing body guard. Her voice had suddenly shot up into the higher, squeakier notes on the musical scales. "But, ah, how about telling us where she went so she doesn't crash this party before we can get you untied, huh?"

There was another few seconds pause. The Ghostwriter nearly had his head to the bars as he strained his eyes to see in without touching them. Something parchment-like was trapped in there, so close to the front that if you tried to pull at the bars, you would have had to have brushed up against it. Ooh, now that was _truly _suspicious. His eyes narrowed, and he turned his head to get a better view of its exact position. If he could just figure out where the edge was…

"I don't know, she just said she was going out, she didn't say what she was doing or when she'd be back. Just that — when she _did _get back, she was going to treat us like we treat ghosts," said Jack. That tinge of horror was still in the back of his voice, which suggested he was well aware of _exactly_ how poorly he and his wife handled their undead specimens. Jack shuddered.

Maddie was in a totally different mindset, however, as her eyes stayed glued to the figure beside her. "Jazz… why are you working with a _ghost_?"

"Excuse me," the Ghostwriter started, teeth gritted. "I'm literally right next to you. Do you even want to be freed?"

"_Of course I want to be freed—" _Maddie roared back, but she was cut off by a plea from her daughter.

"Maybe you can't understand, but he's my friend, mum! The first one I've had in literally years, because I've been holed up in that damn ghost lab for most of my time!" she took a breath. "He _wanted _to help you!"

"He _wanted _to help us?" Jack echoed, disbelieving. "Surely —"

The writer began to filter the words out — if he didn't start doing that now, they'd be there all day, and then they'd _definitely_ get caught. It was a stroke of luck that they hadn't been in the first place. He squinted a little more at the parchment. Words were written there in ink that could only be visible to ghosts, and finally he could see the title: _The Script of Cause and Effect_.

"Oh, you are a dangerous one, aren't you…" the writer muttered to himself, holding his hand just outside the metal bars and pulling the parchment out with his mind, careful not to touch it. "I've been wondering where you went."

"What are you talking about?!" Maddie stammered, pulling uselessly against the ropes. "Jazz, what's he doing?!"

"I'm talking about _this,_" said the Ghostwriter, before Jazz could fill them in. Perhaps if he spoke to them more, showed his full range of emotions and conscious thought, then they would soften to him. He held the script out in front of both of them, his hands nearly at their edges. "This is mine. It's been missing for a few years now, and _yes_, it's very dangerous. No one should ever touch it. Not even me."

Jack made a movement. "The ghost who put it there didn't seem to mind."

The Ghostwriter had to double-take. So did Jazz.

"Wait…" he said. "You saw that ghost make actual physical contact with this thing?"

"Wasn't she supposed to?"

Dread filled the pit of the Ghostwriter's stomach. "Did she tell you her name?"

Maddie shook her head. "All it told us was that it was a sorceress."

_Sorceress_. The word echoed about in the Ghostwriter's mind as if it had gotten stuck in a neural feedback loop. A woman referring to herself as a sorceress had gone about her business while harmlessly touching one of the four most dangerous scripts in existence. A normal ghost would have been taken by its effects mere seconds after the lightest touch. But this one…

It couldn't be.

The Sorcerer from the history books… was he actually a Sorceress? A female? Surely this ghost couldn't be one and the same with the one who had made Pariah Dark's era such a terrifying period of history! The Sorcerer had been destroyed, dissipated in his entirely in the Abyss, never to be seen or heard from again. Randy had taught it over and over in history lessons. The Sorcerer could never come back. The Sorcerer was one of a select few who had perished even as a ghost, at the hands of those who realised it was the only thing they could do.

He was supposed to be gone forever. Everyone was sure of it.

But then there was that day that Mira herself had entered the Abyss. No one had ever known what happened to her there. And her connection to all of this, to this house and to everyone here, was so suspiciously strong—

The thoughts had passed through his mind in the split of a second, and before anyone could tell him otherwise he was pulling out several well tied knots without another moment's hesitation. The script remained hanging in the air where it was well within his eyeshot, an object he hoped never to see go missing ever again. Satisfied that the script itself was indeed the trap, he untied both Maddie and Jack with surprising ease. The knots were simple enough, and came loose easily when one pulled the right way.

"Right!" said Maddie. "Time to put an end to this—"

"You mustn't!" the Ghostwriter cut in, stammering. "We have to get out of here _now_!"

Maddie looked as though about to have a coronary. "What are you, working for her?"

"No! You don't understand because you're humans who don't know the history and the… whatever! The point is, no one is equipped to take her, not even an entire platoon armed to the teeth with ghost weaponry! If we don't leave now, _all of you will die_!"

Even Jack was giving his wife pleading looks, at this point. "Mads…" he said, voice quiet and laced with unannounced dread. "I think he's right. Jazz is okay — we need to go."

"Oh," said a voice from behind them. "I wasn't expecting more visitors."

The Ghostwriter whirled around, and saw… he wasn't sure what he was seeing.

Surely this could not be _her_, the Terrible One? Her face was amiable, approachable, and she wore light casual clothes that wouldn't have been out of place a few decades ago. Even her face had a soft feeling to it, one that could make you feel at home and comfort you in the most dreadful of situations. Her unhappy expressions were not immune to this strange, calming effect either, and had a gentle feel about them. It was as if she wasn't capable of harming anyone…

"… Interesting guests…" she mumbled, flicking her eyes from the Ghostwriter to Jazz, and finally resting them on the two Fenton parents. "Don't you think it's curious how things work out, sometimes? Your presences here are all quite relevant."

Jack was clearly intimidated — not something the Ghostwriter was pleased to see. His spine was arched backwards and his body was trying to push itself, in spite of the mind's protest, into some sort of flight response. Maddie was in more of an attack mode, her body poised to spring at the slightest movement. "I don't want to hear anything about relevance from you, _ghost,_" Maddie spat, venom dripping from her tongue.

The ghost appeared unfazed.

"Actually, you might wish to hear me out…" she began. A small, respectful smile graced her lips, slinking up the sides of her face. Somehow, it still wasn't unpleasant. "Fate did lead to you all to gathering here in this location. Who would I be if I didn't allow a little give when such whimsy is in the air? Please come with me."

No one budged. The writer half expected to see one of Jazz's ecto-weapons go off, but when he looked over at her he realised she wasn't just frozen from fear, she was _actually frozen_. She was in the middle of the half action of firing, almost there and quite determined, but it was as if time had stopped around her body , just like that. No fanfare. No loud noises, no tip-offs… she had simply stopped.

"My deepest apologies, Ghostwriter. She doesn't know her place yet, and is armed too heavily. I'm not interested in sparring with her."

And that was when he felt, with a wrench in his heart and an ache in his chest, one of the biggest surges of rage he had ever known. But it was a quiet rage, too — he did not leap out of position, make any sudden movements, or rant at length. Instead there was a calm to his voice that even frightened him: "I'm not coming with you until you free her."

The ghost arched an eyebrow. "The fates say you have no choice. In any case, I am not denying her her right to see — for the moment, her eyes will simply be one with mine."

The Ghostwriter tore his line of sight back to Jazz, again, who remained just as frozen as she was before.

"Oh, and… mmm. That's interesting," she continued. "You used your power to block part of the script. The scripts use ancient magic, you know. Old and disintegrated but still very powerful. You should be proud of yourself."

Exactly what did one say to a comment like that? She must have read the odd look he was giving her straight off his face, because she floated forwards until she was a little closer, hanging her arms down in front as she slouched in the air.

"Not too many could claim to have a power that can rival the energies of mine. To change wills, to change _reality_, to make stories of us all… I wonder where we would be if it was just you, me, and that wonderful keyboard, in all its former glory? Perhaps we would dance a dance, or perhaps we would disintegrate each other into little ectoplasmic dusts… but you are hampered by that keyboard, Ghostwriter. Your power doesn't work properly without it. In the end, I think I would win."

His mouth felt dry. "Y-you are then. You're the Sorcerer. The _Sorceress_. Aren't you?"

"I was a sorcerer, once," she said. "I am a sorceress now, I suppose. It's your choice to add the _the_ in front. My danger might be more in your imagination and in your books than in this strange reality."

The writer looked around again, and suddenly became aware that both Maddie and Jack had become frozen too. It was as if Clockwork had come and worked his own magic here, but… that couldn't have been right.

"They were worrying you too, weren't they?" the Sorceress asked. "Please do not see this as an aggression. More… it is an act of simplifying matters. Ghost hunters are a problematic species. They will still see what they need to see."

This was it. He was in so far over his head that the sea monster had grabbed his leg and now he was being pulled down, down to where the lights could never shine and the darkness was thicker than steel. Falling to the Abyss. Who was he to resist someone who could freeze you solid in time without even, apparently, thinking about it? And if the books were right, she was capable of much more than just that.

There was a reason they called her _Sorcerer_, after all. Her power was a simple affinity with the ways of the world. Everything else she could do, she invented herself, like no one else ever could. Magic out of nothing.

"If you will not come with me on your own, you will find yourself moving without permission," she warned.

Where was his voice, again? "… Okay." he said, quietly. "Okay, this… this freezing thing. It's not permanent, is it?"

"Only if it's within my best interests…" the Sorceress said, trailing off. "But I am not so interested in lawn ornaments."

A terribly cold comment from someone who appeared strangely warm. The writer suppressed a horrible, internal shudder. And as she turned, in spite of every part of him urging his body to run, get out of there, he realised that if he wanted Jazz unfrozen (her parents would be an unmentioned extra) he would have to bow to the Sorceress's commands.

He didn't have much of a choice, anyway. If he didn't follow willingly, he would follow unwillingly. She had too much power.

And so, with great reluctance, the Ghostwriter gave a short and wholly unenthusiastic nod. "Fine. I'll go."

He expected her to lead him out of the house, somewhere else, but instead she remained where she was, and the world twisted around _them_, leaving the human Fenton statues behind.

The splintered table became a smear of what looked like messy paint. The dimensions twirled, warped, curled in on themselves. Lines became curious curdled scribbles, edges flattened and rounded, the walls were melting. Blinding white light seeped in through the cracks as the world as he knew it was washed away, as if someone was throwing buckets of water over a ruined artwork.

Eventually, all that was left was the white, and the out of place form of the Sorceress.

The strange new dimension had no sense of depth, but figures such as themselves retained their three dimensional attributes, now seeming odder and odder in the backdrop of timeless otherworld. Simple things that should have been present were absent here — there was no gravity, nor did there seem to be any oxygen or air pressure. Breathing was impossible.

Was she ever really planning to drag humans into this twisted plane? Surely, they could never have survived. … Not as they were, anyhow.

"I was only a hundred or so years old when I discovered this space," she said quietly. He couldn't reply back — how was he supposed to talk in an environment where sound didn't flow? Impossible! And yet he could hear her as clearly as — _oh_.

"How do you think I created the Script of Truth and Lies, Ghostwriter?" the Sorceress asked. "Telepathy is an art. Those who touch that script create a link between themselves and I, which allows them to draw upon my power — willingly or not."

_His power seemed to be nearly limitless. Entire armies bent to his will, all leaching off of it, unshakable in their faith. We did what had to be done. Before the reign of the Ghost King could be quelled, we had to put the Sorcerer down. Forever. Pariah Dark may have never realised it himself, but his Sorcerer was truly more powerful than he, with motives unknown, even if the allegiances appeared true…_

"You read too much," the Sorceress said, simply. She was — was she replying to his _memories_? "If you think me to be feared, then you are wrong."

'_Then give me one good reason not to fear you_,' the Ghostwriter thought as strongly as he could, in what was presumably her direction. It was disorienting enough in here that it was becoming difficult to tell. '_Tell me what you're doing! Why you're dragging me into this — this place! The books all said you perished at the hands of the ancients… how? How are you even here?'_

There was an unmistakable giggle, and it travelled even through the non-air, riding on a wave of oxygen that hadn't existed until that exact second. It dissipated back into nothingness somewhere beyond the Ghostwriter's ears.

"You're cute," she said. "Do you think they could ever really kill a ghost?"

'_Apparently not?'_

"Exactly right. Extra points for _apparently_, by the way. Only I have ever killed ghosts, Ghostwriter."

The last sentence echoed strangely. It seemed to make the whiteness twist in an unpleasant manner that reminded the Ghostwriter of a paper jam in a particularly angry printer.

"But then, those ghosts didn't really die either, when I think about it…" she continued, and her face had a hungry look about it now, as if she were thinking of something appetising. "Not… not classically."

No. He wasn't going to let her lead him around like this anymore, he needed _answers_. Damnit, if he was in her domain now, if he was up to his knees in tar, he was still going to try to wade through it. She wouldn't toy with him like this only just to kill him, would she? There had to be a point. Perhaps it would play into her hands in the end, but it was at least much more likely that he would live through this strange encounter. She watched him carefully as the thoughts curled around in his mind.

'_Why am I here? What do you want?'_ he demanded. '_No more of this dancing around the topic. I just want to know_.'

Her grin became pleasant once more. "You're a practical type, you are. That's fine too. In the end I suppose it doesn't really matter if you demonise me, all that needs to happen is for you to see this."

There was a pause. For a moment the Ghostwriter thought this might all have been some sort of unnecessarily cruel joke, but it soon became rather clear that whatever magic was swirling around inside the Sorceress was just taking a moment or two to come to affect. And then, there it was, right in between the two of them.

Somewhere, he could hear Jazz screaming.

The unconscious form of Phantom materialised out of thin… well, perhaps air wasn't the right word. Out of the vacuum was better. He floated in front of the Ghostwriter without even a twitch, entirely unaware of the strange dimension around him. But he also seemed in perfect condition — no marks, bruises, scratches… nothing. The only curious thing was an odd gemstone attached to his chest, held on apparently by some sort of magical attraction, which shone of a colour that was indeterminate. It didn't seem to be a standard colour that anyone was supposed to see, and it danced around the edges of your eyes in a manic attempt to be seen.

"You will notice I haven't harmed him," she pointed out, gesturing to the teen vaguely. "In fact, the artefact on his chest keeps him connected to his human half and therefore — at least somewhat — alive."

'_What on earth's going on here? Why is he here?!_' the Ghostwriter stammered, in his mind.

"He is here, good man," she began, grin once again becoming unpleasant. "Because I need an energy source."

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note:<br>**It's so awkward writing "trunk", as in "trunk of a car". In Australia, we call it the boot. But in my experience some North Americans don't understand that term, so I thought I better drop it even in spite of using Commonwealth English throughout my fanfics.

Also, YEAH, WE'VE HIT THE 50K WORD MARK! Feeling proud of myself for persevering.

Next chapter is an interlude. I'm looking forward to writing it and the chapter after. Both are going to be a _lot_ of fun, for me.


	12. Interlude (II)

**Author's Note:  
><strong>Time for the second interlude chapter! I like to think of interludes as bonus scenes — they're a bit of fun, but they also provide some room to expand on characters and foreshadow events.

Speaking of bonus scenes, there will definitely be a few at the end of this fic. So stay tuned for those.

* * *

><p><strong>Layman Scripts<br>**A fanfic by Pseudinymous

~ **12** ~  
>- <em>Interlude II<em> -

* * *

><p><em>Fourteen Years Ago:<em>

"Hey there, you look stressed. Watchya writing?"

The Ghostwriter looked up with a pair of eyes that had sunk so far into the backs of their sockets, that it was a wonder they hadn't detached themselves and started rolling around in the bottom of his skull. Mira regarded him with sympathy, although one of her brows was firmly raised.

"Nothing fun, I can tell you that," the Ghostwriter moaned. "I want to die. No — I want to consume fifty-six cups of coffee, and then maybe a bottle of wine. Or three. And then pass out on the couch. _For days_."

Mira wisely decided not to dignify his lament with a response. Instead, she stalked around the desk until she came to a position leaning right over the writer's shoulder, squinting with some difficulty at the hastily scribbled pages below. "Handwriting could use work," she noted.

Oh, and _there _was that sour look she had gotten so used to. "Mira," the Ghostwriter began, his voice ever so measured and polite, "I have been awake for 54 hours. I am so tired, that I am fairly sure I'm starting to hear colours. At this point, I'm just glad you recognise it as handwriting and not as, say, a seismograph."

Mira hesitated. "A seismo-what?"

"Never mind," he answered, with a deep sigh.

One of the many things the Ghostwriter had learnt about Mira, however, was that although she wasn't the most educated soul in the world, she made up for that in spades with an insatiable curiosity. _Never mind_ wasn't going to be a satisfactory answer. Mira huffed at him, and then gave a pleading look, and finally her body came to a rest directly on top of his shoulder. "Don't be like that," she whined, still squinting at his squiggly mess of "writing".

The Ghostwriter's hands were up at his eyes, now, pulling the bottom lids down in a crushingly poor attempt to continue staying awake. "A seismograph," he repeated. But before he could finish the sentence he fell into a heap on top of his manuscript, his voice becoming a muffled drawl as he tried to speak his way through the papers. "Is a graph that represents the magnitude of an earthquake."

"Oh," said Mira, who had not fallen with him.

"Oh," the Ghostwriter replied back, in an annoyed, mocking tone he hadn't quite meant.

"Oh?" Mira continued, looking unimpressed.

"… Oh, be quiet," the Ghostwriter finished, starting to fall to the sweet throes of unconsciousness. "I'm tired, you know. You know I'm tired. Ehhhhhh…"

Mira regarded his messy hair and crumpled clothes with distaste, and ended the examination with a short huff. "Yeah, well, that's why I'm here, actually. To tell you to go to frigging bed."

No answer.

Well, she wasn't going to have any of this! Mira leaned down and took it upon herself to grab the Ghostwriter by the bangs of his hair and pull his head straight up. The expression she was given in return could have frightened mobsters, and was the sort of look that convinced high-profile politicians to hire more bodyguards. It strongly suggested that the wrath of a thousand dying suns would be upon her if he just wasn't too tired to command them.

But Mira never took these implied threats too seriously. Especially not when he was almost totally incapacitated. She inspected him as a mother might inspect a particularly misbehaved child.

"_Go to bed, Ghostwriter_," she told him.

"But the deadline—" he whinged, only to be cut off sharply.

"Who cares about the deadline?!" asked Mira, starting to yell. "Look at you, you're a mess! I can't even _read _what you've written on there. You're going to go to bed whether you like it or not — don't you remember what happened last time?"

The Ghostwriter blinked his tired eyes, wearily. Oh yes. He remember last time, all right. Clear as day through the hazy, tired fog in his mind. The ghost gave a weary look to his left hand, which at least still seemed to be reasonably together…

Mira's demeanour softened, and she put his head back down to rest on the stack. "Come on, you know you can't stretch yourself like this. I'm worried that one day I'm going to barge in only to find nothing left of you. Let me take you to bed?"

He muttered something incoherent, and she took the stream of soupy words as a confirmation.

"All right all right, let's go," she said. He clambered over the top of her shoulder, barely able to stand up straight and almost at the point of drifting aimlessly in the air, but with motherly determination Mira made sure he was going to the right place.

When she turned on the light in his bedroom, she grimaced to realise that one side was nearly spotless and the other stuffed and stacked with so many books and papers that one could no longer walk on the floor.

"You've had a bit of a turn," she noted.

"Mmmmph. I got busy," he mumbled back. The Ghostwriter's head was lolling on Mira's shoulder as he fought to stay awake for that last half a minute. Mira put him straight down on his bed, where he lay spread eagle and fell asleep almost immediately.

Mira's lips quirked as she watched him lie there, fingers twitching occasionally as he fell deeper into a dark and dreamless sleep. Where would he be without her to look after him, pulling these insane 54-hour stints because of deadlines, deadlines, deadlines? When would he learn? As a ghost, deadlines, deadlines, deadlines should have been the last thing he worried about. Life was infinite here, everything seemed permanent — there wasn't really any reason to rush at all. The worst part about it was that he made all of these imaginary deadlines up. The Ghostwriter said he didn't trust himself to write "the right things" consistently without them. But all they really made him do was save the serious writing for the last 72 hours.

He could have easily used his keyboard to make the time stretchier, in situations like these. But that was cheating, he had said. What was the point in him setting up all of those deadlines in the first place if he was just going to cheat?

One day she'd convince him to loosen up. Her quirked smile broadened, just a touch.

"Goodnight, John," she told the unconscious figure, affectionately. "One day you'll get it. Eventually, anyway."

* * *

><p><em>Thirteen Years Ago:<em>

The silence was filled with the soundless noise of thousands of deadened screams, imprinted upon the air from millennia ago. They permeated the fog, choked the air. Mirabella Spectra's breath rose in little puffs of smoke in front of her, even in spite of the fact that she wasn't breathing.

It was the Abyss.

You weren't supposed to go here. Anyone could see why — it was the final resting place of the Sorcerer, where the ancients had evaporated him into little more than ectoplasmic mists. This was the battleground where Pariah Dark truly lost the war. Torture still seemed to float through the air, somehow, even though the last living thing that had been here had abandoned the place many years ago.

Mira was floating above it, looking down into the bottomless chasm that splintered apart an entire region of the Ghost Zone. She could feel her nerves chattering together, almost playing a tune as they fired in desperation, begging her to turn around. But she was made from tougher things than that.

Penelope would be entirely against it. So would the Ghostwriter, and Randy, and just about every other ghost in existence. And yet here she was, swimming in a pool of her own adrenaline, in a place where not even the most powerful were supposed to tread.

Mira fell slickly through the air, touching down with a short little bounce on the mouth of the Abyss. Not the smallest current of air passed through, and yet it felt as if it were sucking her in, pulling her only somewhat unwilling body towards the inevitable. The Ghostwriter had taught her about black holes, and in a way this place felt like one — she was standing on the event horizon, from which there was no return…

But there was no reason she couldn't just fly back out. Just because it was creepy, didn't mean it was going to kill her. That was just the sense that everyone _else_ got.

… Right?

This expedition would have been impossible without the aid of teleportation. There had been guards in the areas around the Abyss, numbering in the thousands, and when they saw her stalking around the place they had headed her off almost immediately, warning her of the sacred dangers that might lurk inside, in spite of its abandoned nature. But they weren't ancients, just Observants. And she knew all about Observants — aside from looking at things, they weren't very good at their jobs.

She had headed away as asked, and then teleported behind them. With any luck they were still just as clueless as they were before.

Shadows of deadened trees looked as though they had burst out of the ground and been frozen there, bending and twisting with the warped geography. Everything twirled inwards in a spiral shape, and the gravity changed depending on where you were walking. As Mira continued on, plodding one foot in front of the other, she found that space itself seemed to be getting disoriented. It might have looked organised enough from the outside, but from here, she would look back at things only to find they seemed to be in the wrong location. A tree spiralled around itself the closer she got to it, until she was underneath and it looked like a giant corkscrew. It was like looking at everything through a complicated series of warped mirrors.

She lost sight of the exit, and started to get lost. She seemed to have passed through a five-way junction without noticing until she was well beyond it. But, did that really matter when you could teleport?

No. Mira was powerful. She could teleport anywhere she could think of, as easily as flipping a switch. She trusted herself.

The blackened ground was becoming a cautious mix of deep purples and greens. When she treaded them, they squelched — not like a swamp, but how she imagined lava squelched, not that she'd ever gotten to see any of it herself. Yet, the ground was still solid underfoot.

"Ha-ha," said Mira to the nothingness, and she noted a hint of nervousness that she hadn't thought was in her. "Ha-ha-ha-ha," she continued, testing her voice. A deep echo rang back, from far too many directions.

_Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!_ it said, with not nearly as much uncertainty.

Mira hiccupped. And then she hiccupped again. Curse that nervous trait - it happened _every time_. And now her hiccups were echoing back to her, mocking her, as if three hundred other Mirabella Spectras existed and they were all joining in for a chorus.

"Lots of energy here," said one of the hiccups.

Mira's eyes widened, and she swirled around. The summery dress she was wearing fluttered as she did, but she couldn't see anything. The direction the voice had come from was blackened, dark, cloaked in shadow. Nothing might have been there, but then again it could have been everything.

"Who's there?!" Mira called. "Why are you in here?!"

The shadows seemed to move. "I could ask you the same question, child."

She hesitated. She hated being called a child — with a personality like hers, it did happen more than she'd like — but it didn't seem all so wise to talk back to something she couldn't even see, in a place like this. "… A-are you exploring too?" she managed. "How'd you get past the Observants?"

A minute passed with no reply.

"… Oh… okay," said Mira, softly. She bunched part of her pretty white dress in between her pale fingers. "I guess not, then…"

"Observants?" it asked.

"Yeah! You know, the giant eyeball things that work for—"

"Oh," said the voice, cutting her off.

"Yeah…" said Mira, trying to keep the silence out of it.

"In my time, we called them Ancients."

Mira froze.

"I'm given to believe that was a long time ago. I've been here too many years. I do not like 'Observants'."

Every nerve in her that controlled her ability to teleport tried to fire at once. She could have ended up anywhere with a reaction like that, but instead it all fizzled out, as if the power from her core had been drained in an instant. Mira stared down at her hands and feet wildly, and then back up at shadows. They were getting closer.

"You're very young, child," it continued. "Your form is youthful and strong. Your power is potent."

Mira was stumbling backwards now, away from the shadows. But wherever she walked she seemed to be getting closer, as if the twisted dimension was pushing her towards them. They didn't even need to move — only when she stopped moving did it ever make advancements itself.

Eventually, her back came up against a twisted tree that had replanted its top back into the ground. The darkness was upon her.

"Oh my God…" she whimpered. "No, no, this isn't supposed to happen!"

The darkness smiled gently, somehow. "No, it's not. But I'm glad it did."

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note:<br>**I really love Mira. There is actually a lot of established canon about her in my head that just hasn't quite made it to paper. I'm not sure all of it will. Seems like a lot of effort for an OC, but my brain's just had too much fun playing with it.

**Next Up:  
><strong>Chapter 13: The Script of Cause and Effect (for real, this time!)


	13. Ensnared

**Author's Note:  
><strong>This chapter's been a long time coming.

Also, quite a bit longer than I thought it would be. I've had to split it in two because it was originally nearing 10,000 words long. That was… unexpected. The second half still needs quite a lot of work though, so I'm not sure when I'll finish it. Within the month, ideally. For now, have the first!

Edit: Originally when this was posted it had a missing separator between two scenes. Sorry! Fixed now!

* * *

><p><strong>Layman Scripts<br>**A fanfic by Pseudinymous

~ **13** ~  
><em>Ensnared<em>

* * *

><p>The Ghostwriter was placed surprisingly carefully back on the living room floor, just inches away from where the forgotten script had fallen. Behind him the Fenton statues still stood as solid and immobile as ever, frozen so well into position that one could be forgiven for thinking they'd never been able to move in the first place. The ecto-gun Jazz had given him was nowhere to be seen.<p>

The Sorceress wasn't one to waste time. She flew past him and picked up the script with her bare hands, something that confirmed what the writer already knew — she truly was its creator. No one but her could ever have managed something like that without consequence. No one.

"I was hoping that those unfortunate enough to stumble upon the bait would accidentally touch this, you know," she told him, holding it in front of his face. He leaned back instinctively, a shot of adrenaline rushing down his spine. "I didn't expect a rescue party, much less one with a person who actually knows what this does. Perhaps I will put it away for later."

_You're not going to force me to—_ the Ghostwriter began to think, before derailing that thought and hoping to both heaven and hell she hadn't overheard it. Her expression betrayed nothing, and anything stopping him from making contact with that script was something worth clinging to — best not to push his luck. The Sorceress folded the script a number of times before stowing it away in a little leather bag.

"What are you doing with us?" he tried, instead.

This didn't warrant a reply either, apparently. She was now too busy with floating around and inspecting Jazz, with particular reference to the girl's abundance of weaponry. The Sorceress would touch one on occasion, extending a long slender finger to slide along their often metal exteriors, and look at it with careful, studious eyes.

If he didn't know better, the Ghostwriter could have sworn Jazz's own eyes were following the ancient ghost's path.

This was true helplessness. As the only mobile person in the entire party, and even without any direct threat, he knew that even the slightest step closer would end with him just as immobilised as the rest of them. But it felt like betraying Jazz, standing here and watching in fear. He was sure she wouldn't see it like that, but that didn't stop the gutted feeling that settled at the pit of his stomach. Defiance was not an option. The Sorceress was too powerful, like a force of nature.

She was inspecting the trigger of the ecto-shotgun, now, which had one of Jazz's fingers wrapped quite tightly around it. The girl had been milliseconds away from firing.

"… What are you doing?" the Ghostwriter asked, changing his phrasing. It was about the only thing he could do, and as her eyes came back to meet his, he felt his spine stiffen and his pupils dilate.

"I wouldn't be here today had I not possessed the virtues of a scholarly mind," she said, almost as if it were a warning. "In any case, I doubt I shall be seeing this technology again soon, but it never hurts to pay attention."

The writer's non-existent heart stopped. The Sorceress gave him a moody look in return.

"Don't think so poorly of me. I've no intentions of disowning a child of mine."

"_She's not—_"

"_She _is," the Sorceress continued calmly, paying his knee-jerk reaction little mind. "Ever since she touched a script of her own accord, she has been mine. I suppose I consider her somewhat of a trophy, considering her humanity. Most humans shouldn't be affected by this power, but her… no, she's special," and she leaned in, placing a hand gently in the middle of Jazz's chest. "Years of ectoplasm exposure has altered her, inwardly. Her parents, too."

He could feel himself freezing up, now. _Altered…? _he asked, in his mind.

The ancient ghost smiled warmly, proudly, in a way that a mother might after seeing her child win a prestigious award. "I suppose her spirit became confused and developed a core."

That was when he nearly choked, when the sheer impossibility of it crashed through his mind with the power of a freight train. "_How_?!" he stammered. "She couldn't be anymore alive—"

"Your incredulousness is amusing, Ghostwriter," she told him, leaning away from Jazz and setting her sights firmly upon him. Her movements were graceful, not unlike what Mira's had been, many years ago. "But it seems to have happened. And it's storing plenty of energy for her, too, even if as a human that's rather pointless. I like to think of it as an evolutionary accident."

She flashed another look at Jazz, warm and inviting, even though Jazz was incapable of responding. And then she moved it to the girl's parents, eyeing them warily. "I do not like these ones, though. When the pair of you kidnapped my subordinate, the last thing I expected was for them to come looking for their daughter here. They are rude, act as if they know everything… just because they tore a hole into our dimension in their dreadful laboratory, that doesn't mean they understand us."

The sudden topic change threw him. There had to be a reason for this speech, for showing them these things and holding them here, that would come together and explain the situation. If only she would stop toying with them and—

"Fine, since you're impatient," she announced.

There was a popping sound in the air, which snapped and crackled from near the front door over towards where Jazz was standing. And the weapons the girl had so carefully selected came apart, disintegrating and scattering into atomic dusts, disappearing to never be seen again. A faint scattering of dust pattered down around her petrified feet.

"I'm sorry, it just wasn't going to do to let her keep those."

"You're making sure we're entirely disarmed?" and hopeful naivety ran through him, born more from foolish wishful thinking than an honest assessment of the situation. "… You're about to let us go?"

That one earned a most unpleasant smile, indeed. "Ha…" she told him, voice devoid of humour. The Ghostwriter found himself being stared down by one of the most frighteningly friendly gazes he'd ever had the displeasure of mentally describing. "I might not be your enemy, but you are clearly mine. I know what you're thinking, and I know what _they_ are thinking. You're all dangerous. So, I'm going to keep you."

"Keep us?" and then it dawned on him. "Wait, you mean _imprison_—!"

"At a more permanent location, yes," she noted. "Don't look at me like that! Letting you all run around freely when you're clearly not going to stay out of my way, how could I allow that? Your vested interest in Spectra, and my child's vested interest in Phantom, it demands it."

A pause, as she collected her thoughts.

"And I will, by the way, be going to free Spectra the moment the doors are locked."

There wasn't any warning before the dimensions twisted again, and without warning the Ghostwriter found himself slamming into a cold concrete floor, his hands and knees aching dreadfully upon impact, where he fell to his side and rolled onto his back. The pain was so sudden and extreme that the great gasping breath he took was about as mandatory as it would have been were he human. It was reflexive, and gave him no choice in the matter.

"Oh, sorry. My aim was off," the Sorceress explained, floating above him and looking down with an expression of utmost sympathy. "Anyhow, I think I shall take my leave. Thanks to you, I have business."

She melted into thin air, and disappeared.

Beside him, the Fentons were no longer statued, and had been sprawled out on the floor. Maddie and Jack had both been startled into inaction, staring into the ceiling in shock. But Jazz was too busy choking on something, apparently, coughing as she struggled to pull herself into a sitting position on the floor.

Terrified it might be serious, the Ghostwriter began to crawl over.

"_Stop_!" Maddie rasped, in between gasps for air. "Don't you get anywhere near her!"

She had to be mad. Only a madman would stop him from helping her. "She could be choking!" he reasoned, but the mother wasn't about to be told.

"I said _don't_!" she raved, somehow getting to her feet even in spite of the inter-dimensional battering, coming to a crashing halt by her daughter's side. Maddie pulled Jazz into a hug even as the girl continued to cough and sputter, but eventually this calmed and her body became limp, sagging gratefully into her mother's hold. Maddie glared back at the Ghostwriter, protectively.

They were in a cage. A prison cell with no door. Locked in one, all together, when emotions were running high. And even though he was clearly on their side, apparently Jazz's mother at the very least thought he was about to do a lot more harm than good.

A quick test of intangibility proved the hypothesis he dreaded — just as it was in the Ghost Zone, phasing through solid objects was impossible here. Pangs of hopelessness shot through him as he realised just how much they were at the Sorceress's mercy, now. There was nothing else that could be done.

"You lied to me," Maddie bristled, as Jack made his way slowly to her side. "And I can't believe it worked, I can't believe _you tricked me_! I don't care whether you're against that other ghost or not. You're filthy ectoplasmic scum, just like the rest of them."

There was nowhere to go. It wasn't appropriate to run. So instead, he sagged, back arched as he sat on his knees. "Fine," he said, almost giving up on everything.

"What do you mean, _fine_?"

But the Ghostwriter was shaking his head, eyes pointed straight at the ground, unmoving and making himself seem as little of a potential threat as possible. "I don't want to argue with you, there isn't any point. You're not going to change your mind. I'm a ghost, you hate ghosts, and there's nothing I can do about it."

Maddie stumbled, shaking slightly in indecision, and looked to Jack for help. But he was still getting his wits back after so many rude shocks, and couldn't offer much in the way of opinion. As enthusiastic as he was about ghost hunting, he was the warmer of the two Fentons, and much more likely to provide leniency in strange circumstances such as these.

It was ironic, almost, that someone so full of motherly love for her children, and her family as a whole, could be so cold. Domestication versus profession were very clear cuts, for Maddeline Fenton.

In the silence, a small voice rose from Jazz. "I trust him," she said, truthfully. Maddie's eyes zipped down to her, fixed like beads set into her skull. "… Please don't… he's trying his best," Jazz continued, and now she was almost sputtering. "You don't get it, you don't get it, _you don't get it_! There's so much of this situation you don't understand!"

The Ghostwriter watched the spectacle, half in awe and half in horror. Maddie had arched her neck backwards at the outburst.

"Sweetie," she tried. "It's a ghost."

"_He _is a ghost, _HE_!" she yelled, with the anger of Poseidon on a ship stuck in a storm. "You don't know anything about ghosts! They're sentient, truly sentient, _and_ _that core they talk about but you can never find is what holds their soul_!_ Y_ou know, the same one they had when they were alive, because it's what makes them _them_!"

Jack was holding his breath. So was the Ghostwriter, although he did that so often it was almost moot to mention. Maddie's face had broken in two, now, one half of her desperately wanting to side with her daughter and the other dogmatically following what she'd believed for years. She was at a loss for words, unsure of what to do but knowing full-well she had to do something.

The Ghostwriter scuttled backwards until his back was arched against the wall, not wanting to get involved in whatever was going to happen next. He wondered if the Sorceress had seen this coming, and wanted to set off the fireworks. Or perhaps, more likely, she just didn't care enough to separate them. Or maybe she only had one cell, and…

And his thoughts were cut off abruptly, as he noticed the mother's glare settle squarely on him. "You brainwashed her."

_What_?

"I said," Maddie growled, loudly, projecting her voice. "You brainwashed her, ghost."

Oh, and the knee-jerk reaction was coming, he could feel it, and he just didn't know how else to respond, here. "_How_?" he begged. "By being nice to her? By trying to help her? How the hell is that brainwashing?"

"Nothing but lies!" Maddie continued to growl, holding onto her daughter as if Jazz was a cat quite intent on escape. "You may have charmed her, but only because she hasn't lived long enough to see your kind for what you truly are! What do you want from her, huh? Planning on _feeding_ on her emotional energy, in the end?"

And he rolled his eyes at this, staying well-backed into his tiny little corner. "Be thankful that's a myth. Or those ghost cores the Sorceress reckons you developed would be demanding that you feed them with 'emotional energy' all the time — rather than just the ectoplasm you breathe in in the air of your lab."

"Lies," Maddie repeated, but this time she wasn't so sure. Even Jack had taken to looking down at his chest, as if he would have been able to spot something so esoteric and out of phase with the rest of the world. "… We can't have… it would be impossible."

"Well, don't look at me," the Ghostwriter declared, with a shrug. "_You're _the ghost researchers."

Maddie's grip had loosened enough that Jazz squeezed out of it, using the mother's surprise as a prime opportunity. She reseated herself next to the Ghostwriter in protest of this entire argument, legs crossed, spine rigid, the sort of morbid determination crossing her features that you only saw from someone who was determined to go down with the ship. "Mum…" she hesitated. "What would you do if you woke up one day and _I _was a ghost?"

"It wouldn't happen," she asserted, but there was a fear in her eyes that dreaded being wrong. "It wouldn't be you. Ghosts are imprints left behind, they act as if they're sentient, but they're not. The original person isn't there anymore."

But Jazz wasn't going to settle for that. "_What would you do_?" she repeated.

The truth was, though, that Maddie had no idea what she would do. And so her eyes sunk well into the back of her head as she thought about all of the horrible possibilities, swirling dangerously around in the recesses of her mind. The motherly and domestic sides to her — which she had fought for so long to keep separate — were colliding with each other, and the results weren't something she ever wanted to talk about.

"Mads…" said Jack, snapping her out of her thoughts. "It tried to save us."

"I don't care what it _tried _to do!" Maddie burst out, as the gears inside her head fell back into their usual positions. "Don't you understand, Jack? That _creature_ sitting over there is a ghost. Ghosts lie, ghosts act, and they are. Not. _Human_! It's nothing more than an imprint of post-human consciousness tacked onto a core and some sculpted ectoplasm. That's it!"

The Ghostwriter didn't know what came over him then, but he laughed. It wasn't a hollow laugh, but more a laugh that someone made when they were very sad, indeed. "I'm not even me, then. That's how it is?"

"But you are!" said Jazz, in determined protest. "You're real, you're you, you're _human_! It doesn't matter that you're a ghost. If you were born human, then _that makes you human_!"

"Jazz, you don't know what you're talking about!" Maddie fumed.

The ghost had formed a bemused expression, now. "Please," he said. "Your daughter has had more experience with ghosts in the past four days than you've had in your entire life."

"_What's that supposed to mean_?!" the mother snapped.

"She bothered to talk to us, and tried to understand us."

More like, she had been the only one to bother to talk to or understand him since Mira. Randy didn't count — he was family. But it was nice to have someone around who believed in his convictions, who could put up with his admittedly irritable personality, and who actually cared about his safety and mental wellbeing. Even if she was alive, and even if her parents were by all measures insane.

… If he was being perfectly honest, too, she had done a whole lot more than just _try_ to understand him. She _did _understand. Jazz hadn't lived in effective isolation for as long as he had, but she knew it well. She also knew about pain and grief. He didn't want to let that go. And he didn't want to leave her to fend for herself through it all again, either.

"But you know," he continued. "I guess now that we're all in a cage together, this entire argument doesn't even matter anymore. The only choice is to get along."

Jack went to open his mouth, but Maddie glared at him and he shut it just as quickly. "Don't answer it," she warned. "You're just playing the game."

"Yes, because being locked in a prison cell by a ghost most of us consider terrifying is _such _a game," he retorted, and he could feel himself getting fired up in spite of his wish to just get along with these two people. "And here you are, all up in arms about me. You have no sense of perspective."

"Don't you even dare go there," Maddie warned.

"Go where? _Logic_? Oh yes, I forgot, being a shadow of my former self totally disables me from using _logic_."

"I can't take this anymore!" said Maddie, voice ending in a growl. "Jazz!" she commanded, "Get away from it, now! It's trying to—"

Maddie's rant was abruptly cut short by a knock on the cell door. The Sorceress was glaring through, as if she were staring at toddlers. "I thought you'd be done by the time I got back, but apparently not. I've had enough of this ruckus," she announced. "I was hoping you'd all just learn to get along, but I'm not going to sit around and listen to this."

She was looking almost squarely at Maddie, and although Jack had barely participated in the argument, he made it clear he was on her side by his positioning. They both reeled at the ghost's uniquely intense gaze.

"Well, I caught the jumpsuits separately, anyway…" said the Sorceress, as if thinking aloud. "I suppose I could put the two of you in a different cell."

"Hey—" Maddie began in protest, but she stopped without warning because she was gone. And so was Jack.

Jazz's face had turned to the sort of pasty white colour that, in mayonnaise, probably would have indicated that the contents of the jar was still fresh. "Where did they go? _What did you do with them_?!"

"Be calm, my child. They're just in another cell two stories up," she said, dismissively. "I might be keeping you here against your collective wills, but I'm not really one for torture — all I need is to keep you where you are so you can't cause trouble."

"And how long will you be keeping us out of said trouble, then?" the Ghostwriter shot. "Hey, and I mean that. Where are we? What the hell are you keeping us out of?"

But the Sorceress waved it off, much to the Ghostwriter's frustration and Jazz's general horror. "You're in a pocket dimension, actually," she said. "One of my favourites."

"And what about letting us out?"

She tipped her head to the side, resting it lightly on one of the bars. "I'm sorry. It's not really part of the plan."

The Sorceress vanished before she could be required to dance around anymore straightforward questions, and the writer hung his head.

Jazz was on her knees, staring in shock at the wall just beyond the prison cell. From in here you never would have known they were in this "pocket dimension" that had been spoken of, but if they truly were, it meant that even escaping the cell would be useless. They'd be just as stuck in whatever this strange place was, still unable to escape.

Well and truly trapped.

It wasn't long before the tears began, thick and fast, streaming down the girl's cheeks as she cast her wobbly stare straight through the bars and possibly even the wall behind them. But the Ghostwriter didn't know what to do. He'd never really been stuck with consoling someone so broken, before. He'd read about it — over and over again, from plenty of sources, and even written about it. But it was more difficult in real life. He hadn't had the experience before. And he'd never really been on the receiving end, either, because he had always carefully hidden his grief away from the view of others for fear of being looked down upon.

Even as she sat there crying, he could do nothing but look up to Jazz Fenton. She was just simply at the end of her rope.

… Truth be told, he imagined he didn't feel much better than she did, right now. It was only the well-enforced stoicism of ghostly biology that prevented him from breaking down himself, and so all he could do was stare blankly as the fatalistic thoughts swirled about in his mind. This was it — there wasn't any getting out of this.

It was several minutes before Jazz seemed to get to a point where she could even speak. "She's using him for energy," she finally said, still shaking. "_She's using my brother as an energy source_."

The Ghostwriter nodded, but it was a slow acknowledgement, not an enthusiastic agreement. What else was he supposed to do in a situation like this? There wasn't anything he could say to comfort her.

"What's going to happen to everyone?" she continued, voice fizzling out into a whine as she tried to stop herself from sobbing. "What's going to happen to _us_? There's got to be a way out, there has to be, we can't just be stuck in here forever!"

And then he swallowed, because he knew one surefire way out and he absolutely didn't like it. It wasn't even an _option_.

Jazz's eyes were fixed upon his face, however, analysing even through the continuous flow of tears. "You know a way out," she said. It wasn't a question.

"No," said the Ghostwriter.

"You _do_, I know that look!" Jazz begged. "What could possibly be worse than being trapped in here while she does whatever she wants?!"

He took a deep breath. He wasn't even sure he should mention the possibility of it to her, after all. She didn't know how these things worked, and she'd never been through all of _that _to begin with. But there was an imploring look in her eyes that indicated she wasn't going to give this up until he told her.

"We can't do that," he said, quietly. "It's suicide."

"But is it _really_ suici—"

"Yes," said the Ghostwriter. "It really is. Trust me on that one."

Jazz didn't seem overly convinced, and he sagged back into the wall at the pleading expression she was gave him.

"I don't think you understand how literally I mean suicide…" he mumbled. "You have to be dead, Jasmine."

Her eyes had widened, and his hunch had been correct. She'd been thinking some ridiculous and risky escape procedure, like a proper prison break. She hadn't understood that he was thinking about a totally different method of escape altogether.

"And with you… I'm not even sure it would work," he added, quietly.

"… What exactly does this involve?" Jazz hazarded. The Ghostwriter found his fingers tapping together, nervously.

"Well, normally…" he began, as if treading on glass, "It… the Ghost Zone is very well populated with ghosts who were once human, obviously."

She nodded, but said nothing to interrupt.

"… The Ghost Zone is also a dimension stacked on its side along with many other dimensions, including the real world and this little pocket dimension here… How do you think the ghosts _get _to the Ghost Zone? And why do you think they can't get back out except by using portals?"

Jazz's face was blank. He clasped one of his wrists, trying not to think back to when—

"Most of us never take form in the real world because there's no ectoplasm to make a form _with_. But even at a completely instinctual level, it's much better to have a form than be without one… and in a state like that, jumping dimensions is like walking through walls made of paper. But it's totally uncontrolled. You end up deposited randomly in the Ghost Zone. Instinct keeps you there, no matter how strong your will is, until you can take form properly."

"… And after that, you can no longer… jump?" she asked, carefully. The Ghostwriter gave her another nod.

"You get stuck," he clarified. "And there's only one case where none of that will happen."

She leaned in. "It's that… that ghost core she was talking about, isn't it?" Jazz asked.

"If it really exists, and it's really been storing that much ectoplasmic energy all this time… then you'll just take form wherever you drop. And we'll still both be stuck in this cell."

"… I see." she said, softly. "Well, I guess you weren't playing up the suicide part…"

"Not even slightly. Don't even _think_ about doing that."

It was a hollow sort of nod, but she had conceded defeat at least. The tears seemed to have dried somewhat in the course of conversation. "So… what do we do now?" Jazz asked.

The writer offered a hopeless shrug. "We wait, Jasmine. There's nothing else we can do."

* * *

><p>It was the middle of what the Ghostwriter presumed was "night" when he roused from his slumber and cast a steady gaze over the cold, steely jail cell. But all was not calm — in fact, what had awoken him was a rare, very loud and audible sob from Jazz.<p>

She wasn't looking his way. She had no idea he was awake. In fact, he had no idea that she wouldn't be asleep. Last he looked, she'd been curled up on that bedroll, near comatose. It felt like he was intruding now that the tears were flowing so freely and she was crying in full, terrible sobs, because it was something she so obviously didn't want to be seen doing. He watched her for a few minutes, but closed his eyes quickly when she started to turn her head. Perhaps she was making absolutely sure he didn't know.

The crying continued, a little more quietly, until he couldn't stand it anymore. It wasn't that he wanted her to stop — by all means, it was a healthy enough emotional release from what he remembered of living a normal human life — it was that he couldn't just lie there knowing she was in that much pain. In spite of himself, he opened his eyes. Her back was still facing him.

"Jasmine," he said, softly.

The speed at which she turned could have rivalled the flight speed of a jet. Her face was covered with tears, drops of them escaping and sliding all over hands that had failed to stem the flow. She shook violently, in utter vulnerability.

"It's okay," he continued, knowing full well that she would be thinking quite otherwise. "Can you do something for me?"

No reaction. It was as if things were being weighed up in her head.

"Take a deep breath. Slowly. Count to four as you breathe in, hold it for another four, then breathe out for four."

She was still shaking, but seemed to think the best of such instruction and followed it anyway. Her breath wasn't consistent, but it got there in around about the right number of seconds. She breathed it all back out, unsteadily.

"Okay," he said. "And again."

This time was better, but only slightly. As Jazz focused on not hyperventilating, he slid himself out of his own bedcovers and kneeled down beside her on the cold stone floor. She seemed to be improving, at least, from proper breathing.

"Good. Lie down."

He was a little surprised, actually, at how willing she was to follow this instruction. She did give him funny glance as he leaned over her, but this ended quickly when it became clear that all he was doing was pulling the other end of the bedcovers back over. He went around and tucked the three sides of them under the bedroll, for what little it was worth, and returned to his previous position by her side.

"It's not quite a proper bed, but it's something…" the Ghostwriter mumbled. The tears still hadn't quite stopped and her breathing hadn't quite returned to normal, but she was staring at him now. He wasn't exactly sure what to do about that, but knew deeply enough that something was expected, there.

Later, he would argue that his hand had moved without his permission, or that it somehow wasn't really him — or any other semi-reasonable excuse he could think of. But soon enough he found it resting upon her arm, casting upon it a firm but reassuring hold. "You don't have to be strong all the time, you know," he muttered. "I don't think anyone can be. I'm sure this is a cliché, but weakness is just one of many things that makes you human."

It took her another few lungfuls of air to respond. "… But even you tried to hide it," she answered, quietly. "When you were human, in the car."

Oh. So she _had _noticed him tearing up, back there. The Ghostwriter could feel the green rising to his cheeks already. "Do as I say, not as I do?" he tried, and he earned a weak little laugh among the tiny leftover sobs. "Seriously, if you want a role model, it better not be me. Look elsewhere."

That one earned a smile, even. It was gentle and war-torn but it still had all the basic hallmarks of a good one. "You're not so bad, Ghostwriter," she told him. "… Are we stuck here forever?"

He didn't want to reply that, and looked away guiltily. How could he respond, when the truthful answer was _maybe_?

In his silence, Jazz took the opportunity to take him by surprise. "Lie down," she instructed.

The Ghostwriter gave her a bizarre look.

"Just do it? For me?"

And he obeyed, as if she had him under some sort of spell. Come to think of it, actually—

She was carefully untucking one side of her own bedcovers, undoing the work he had done and leaving it wide open. There was room enough inside for another person, if a very determined one.

"What are you doing?" he asked, trying to hide at least some of his own incredulousness. He failed.

Jazz took a moment to collect her thoughts, before coming to a surprisingly solid and unshaken conclusion. It culminated in a nervous smile, and she shuffled backwards a little to allow for more space. "Showing weakness," she said.

A shiver ran through the writer's spine, and he tried his very best to ignore it as the girl's gesture did cycles in his mind. This was it, a decision point, where the rules were clouded over and the real needs of the world were obscured by the wish to just be close to someone. He'd managed sixty years without this — why now, of all times and in all places, should it have mattered so much to him? But as he looked into those two broken teal eyes, wobbling and apprehensive, his resolve melted.

He must have looked stunned.

And in spite of himself, in spite of the situation they were in and everything that had happened around them in the past number of days, he reached out a trembling hand until it lay upon the pillow just beyond Jazz's face. "Is this… is this even right?"

"I don't care anymore, I don't care what's right," she told him, still holding the covers open. "I've had enough, and…" she trailed off, down to a whisper. "I-I… just want someone to hold me."

The Ghostwriter felt as if he should have needed to be told twice, but once was good enough. He crawled under the blankets, and he put his arm around her. She curled in, in spite of the chill she must have received in turn, and placed her head firmly against his chest.

There was something odd about human warmth that he couldn't quite put his finger on. Perhaps the pleasant sensation wasn't caused so much by body heat as it was the feeling of a living soul being up against him, from a world he had long been divorced from. He found himself holding her with every intent of never letting go.

… Perhaps he liked her quite a bit more than he wanted to admit.

"This isn't something I've ever really done…" he mumbled, not as quietly as he could have. His voice sounded awkward, as if he was having trouble using it. "We're so different, too. People would say—"

"People are dumb," Jazz cut in, her own voice muffled as she spoke into his shirt. "There is no normal. Even psychology doesn't know what normal is."

"Well… it is unusual, though."

"Following impulses?" she asked, finally bringing her tear-stained face up so she could look him in the eyes. The smile she wore was incomplete and cracked, but still made a pleasant mark upon her features. "Nothing unusual about that."

This girl could think her way around anything. He smiled back at her, briefly forgetting that they were locked away here with little hope of escape, and instead thought of other things. All the teasing he would endure from Randy, all of the odd glances he would get from the other ghosts if they ever found out… the playful but encouraging slap Mira would have driven straight into his back at the first word of this…

He could feel Jazz's heart, now, up against his arm. In a strange way it made him feel alive, not as if he were human but almost as if he had never truly lived.

"Besides," she said, her face falling. "If we never get out of here, it will never matter."

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note:<br>**

I was going to say "turtleneck" instead of "shirt", but that sounded too awkward. In Australia, you call a turtleneck a skivvy, because honestly "turtleneck" is such a weird name for an item of clothing. I would have preferred that, but apparently it's not really a used or known term in the US. In the first version of this text, it was "skivvy". Being an Australian speaker writing for a mostly North American audience is tricky, sometimes (though there do seem to be a few of you readers from Europe, which is super cool).

Fun fact, I went to Vancouver (Canada) over Christmas in 2014. I had a great time talking to locals and accidentally mixing in Australian words and phrases. They had no idea what I was going on about. But it's so natural to use those expressions that in speech, it just happens. Was kind of glorious, actually.


	14. The Script of Cause and Effect

**Author's Note:  
><strong>The average chapter length of this story sometimes makes it difficult to motivate myself to get updates out consistently, but I guess I'm also proud of that it's decently long. Makes the story feel more like the novel-type affair it's supposed to be.

I really, really want to finish this. It will be the first time I've finished anything even a third as long as the current length of this story. I know it's just fanfiction, but I feel like I'm learning so much from writing it… about my writing style and also how my stories tend to develop. It's worth it.

* * *

><p><strong>Layman Scripts<br>**A fanfic by Pseudinymous

~ **14** ~  
>- <em>The Script of Cause and Effect<em> -

* * *

><p>A gentle smile. Its owner tittered quietly to herself.<p>

"Oh…" she said, "Isn't this cute?"

There were many dimensions stacked across the multiverse, each unique and most devoid of life. The Real World, or so some of the humans and most of the ghosts have come to call it, was one of the few that had a real distinction between day and night. All dimensions had a time stream, but few had such a straightforward, natural means of measuring it.

The Real World was also one of the few dimensions, along with the Ghost Zone, that was populated with any life at all. The Ghostwriter didn't know what lay beyond the building in which they'd been incarcerated, but suspected that if he and Jazz ever escaped into the pocket dimension outside, they would be very much alone.

He'd woken up before her. To his irritation, he had no idea what time it was — Jazz's strange cordless phone had run flat during the middle of the night (was it really appropriate to call it night?), and its screen no longer cast its illuminating glow. Even in the Ghost Zone he had several clocks adorning the library walls, as it was just as natural for a ghost to keep the time as it was for a human.

For one, he liked to make a habit of _mostly _normal sleeping hours.

He laid there thinking about these things of such little consequence, before the slow, inevitable realisation that he had just spent the previous night with his arms wrapped around another person. In fact, he was still holding onto her now that he'd woken up, and he wasn't going to let go anytime soon, lest she be disturbed. It was the sort of realisation that sowed the seeds of both panic and relief, which conducted a brief struggle in his mind until he finally decided to disregard them altogether, and simply lie there.

Nonetheless, they nagged.

_What have you done?!_ one part of his mind yelled. _You can't be here. You can't be doing this. Oh God, it's too late now. Look what you've done, John!_

The Ghostwriter closed his eyes, trying not to panic. He was lying down with a very nice, extraordinarily strong-willed and brave young woman — and to comfort her, no less. Nothing wrong with that.

… Except, oh God, there was so many things wrong with that. If they ever got out of this mess it wasn't something they'd ever be able to conduct publicly. And that was before you even got started with her parents — they added a whole new layer of complexity to a problem that really shouldn't have arisen in the first place.

Jazz shifted uncomfortably in her sleep; he realised he'd been tensing and quickly relaxed his arms. After she was done, he watched her rest, quietly.

…

She wasn't what he would typically describe as beautiful. Her face was quite rounded, her cheekbones low, but it gave those large teal eyes a sincere look that you didn't quite get with 'perfect' features. It was a pleasing aesthetic, and it worked for her.

But looks were rudimentary. He liked how she could provide intelligent, thoughtful conversation. The way she would turn even the most problematic topics on their heads. The way she respected books… with the slight exception of the few she had thrown at Mira. It was almost as if they'd known each other for far longer than just half a week, although perhaps familiarity grew quickly when situations had gotten as complicated as theirs.

Just beyond the bedroll sat a few buttered slices of bread on a plate. It looked like the Sorceress had at least remembered that humans needed to eat, which backed up the idea that she wanted to keep Jazz alive and well. But it also meant the ghost had been back in this cell, and would have seen the pair bundled up together like that. He wondered what the Sorceress would have thought, though it was probably of little consequence, in the grand scheme of things…

"Mmph…" Jazz muttered, starting to turn over. But instead of remaining asleep her eyes fluttered open, finding herself staring into the Ghostwriter's collar. She seemed confused, as if she couldn't quite remember how she'd gotten there, but relaxed again once her mind broke through to proper conscious thought.

"… I'd say good morning, but I really have no idea if it's actually morning," he admitted. And then he turned green, a reflex he had absolutely no control over. "This is a little strange, isn't it? Waking up next to someone…"

"I think it's reassuring," she said, quietly. "Um, your face is changing colour."

"I imagine so!"

"And your voice is very high."

The writer nodded. Perhaps shutting up for the moment would be best.

"… This is the first time I think I've seen you properly with those glasses off too, I think."

_I can't very well sleep with them on my face_, the Ghostwriter thought fiercely, hoping that she might — by some miracle or another — hear it. She did not.

"Like a fish out of water," Jazz noted, with a short-lived but unmistakably wry grin. "It's okay. It's really… okay."

Unfortunately, the Ghostwriter's voice had all but disappeared. Presumably it was hiding somewhere in there, but didn't seem keen on making another appearance in light of the current circumstances. So he closed his eyes again and tried to calm himself down.

"Are you going to go back to sleep?"

"Well… I'm not getting up, at least," he managed, thankful for the direct question. "It's not a problem, is it?" He opened his eyes just a peak to catch her shaking her head.

"No," she said. "I'm good."

Jazz stretched herself out properly, and then curled back in with a deep sigh. Bright orange-red hair splayed over the pillow on which she lay, tangled but not dreadfully so. What did she see in him, especially when their lives were literally worlds apart? What would happen if they got out of this unscathed? _Could _it even continue? Surely something like this couldn't really work…

"You look upset," she noted.

The Ghostwriter's lip curled.

"… Just, uhh… just an unpleasant thought, it's nothing."

She didn't make further comment. His eyes were closed, however, so he missed the worried look she'd shot him, and now he was retreating back into his own mind. Perhaps there wasn't any point in worrying about this mess right now. Of course, on several levels he understood that it was wrong for them to be here like this, but it wasn't like he was planning on using her, or as if anyone could criticise them while they were trapped and mostly alone. The rest would just have to work itself out later, even if it all fell apart in the end.

… _Even if all it all fell apart_.

"You're like me," she said, out of the blue. "A version of me who's already made all of the mistakes and knows better than to see them happen to someone else. That's what I see in you," she paused, a hint of nervousness in her voice. "Since you were wondering."

* * *

><p>Nothing much happened throughout what was presumed to be 'day'. It wasn't even accented by a second episode of telepathy.<p>

There weren't any guards here. As the other cells down the hall seemed to be empty, there probably wasn't much of a calling for them, and it wasn't like Jazz and the Ghostwriter were going to start a two-man prison riot. When they called out to the other cells to see if anyone was there, all that replied was silence. The inward-set bars made it nearly impossible to see much of the rest of the hall.

In both boredom and desperation, the Ghostwriter eventually made several half-hearted attempts to phase through the walls, roof, floor, and bars. But intangibility made not an ounce of difference. They were ghost proof.

Eventually he gave up and settled into a corner. His pockets were still lined with pens and notepads, and for a while he decided simply to sit there and write things down. Jazz joined him after a while, up against his shoulder as if it were a leaning post, and it wasn't long before he found himself lending her more of his precious writing tools.

He stopped his own work, however, as she began, peering over her shoulder as she put pen to paper.

… She wasn't bad, for someone so unpracticed. It was the first time he'd actually seen anything she'd written — the story she'd crafted back at Sam's mansion had been kept well and truly away from prying eyes — but it wasn't quite a story, this time around. Instead she was busily preparing a series of psychological notes on ghost behaviour.

After ten minutes of feeling that this was far too close to home for his own liking, the Ghostwriter stowed his own pen and paper back into his pockets and closed his eyes. Though he was regaining some of his own writing ability it still hadn't completely returned, and he dreaded to think how many of Jazz's notes might be based on him. With a twitch, he cast his mind elsewhere. Onto more comfortable thoughts.

Was this going to be their lives, now? Forever stuck in this tiny little cell?

… Or less comfortable thoughts. He jerked his eyes back open and focused intently on the bars of the containment area. A dark flicker cast a deep shadow into the centre of his mind, all-consuming and unable to be penetrated by light. If they really were completely stuck, then the real boredom, the true agony of being trapped here, was still yet to be seen. That would come in a few days time when the hopelessness of it all told them how little chance of escape they actually had. The humdrum would continue into infinity. And eventually they'd run out of notepaper, too — he had plenty, but he wasn't capable of summoning it out of nowhere.

He'd been lost in a loop of these thoughts for far too long when he finally felt a tug at his arm. The Ghostwriter looked down.

"It's faded a bit," Jazz told him, apprehensively.

Her sleeve was rolled up. And she was right, too; the words that kept the Script of Truth and Lies from taking her mind were starting to disappear right off her skin. There was nothing for it but to pull out a pen and put down a fresh layer of ink, hoping against hope his power alone truly was enough to stop the Sorceress's vile, archaic magic.

"What happens when we run out of ink?" she asked, looking up.

The Ghostwriter inwardly squirmed. There _was _a solution to that, if an unideal one. He chewed the side of his lip, an old nervous habit he'd learned to tone down significantly since gaining a set of teeth that were more befitting a shark than a human being, and decided to run with it anyway.

"If you could prick your finger and get a decent flow of blood, we could use that," he suggested, trying to keep his usual nervous gestures to a minimum. "I mean, I'd use ectoplasm, but if it's true that you've developed a core I have horrible feeling your body would just absorb it."

He'd expected a disgusted reaction, but no, she didn't seem as put off by the idea as he'd thought she'd be. She closed her own notepad and gave a determined nod. "Okay, good." she said. "At least we've got a backup plan."

At least indeed. But he sincerely hoped it never came to it.

* * *

><p>The night had passed without incident. The Sorceress had reappeared briefly to offer Jazz dinner, which consisted of a dish of pasta that looked so hastily put together that the cook indeed may not have known what a saucepan was. Of course, the ghost had disappeared as quickly as she'd come, steadfastly avoiding any questions either one of them could throw at her.<p>

When the ghost was gone, Jazz had eaten the provided 'meal' with about as much enthusiasm as a librarian reading a book at a death metal concert.

As the night came to an end, they'd found themselves curled up against each other again. She seemed… happy probably wasn't the right word, considering the circumstances. But she was content. And having her here like this made the Ghostwriter happier than he ever wanted to admit, in spite of everything.

He wrapped an arm around her shoulders, closed his eyes, and went to sleep.

* * *

><p>When the Ghostwriter awoke the next morning, something was very wrong. And this time it had nothing to do with Jazz.<p>

He sat up slowly, doing his best not to disturb the haphazard mess of blankets as he went. The tips of his fingers felt as if burning but any pain was strangely absent, with shots of energy ricocheting through straight from his core. On the outside his hands appeared their usual unassuming shade of pale grey, but that was definitely a rouse. He knew better than that.

He wracked his mind to attribute this to something. A new power, perhaps? But he'd existed as a ghost for decades, now, and hadn't gained a power in well over twenty years. For that matter neither had Randy, and genetics ought to have counted for something.

But the lack of sense this made was far from going to stop the process, and now a sensation like pins and needles was spidering its way around his hands from the points of his fingertips, heating them with an overwhelming amount of energy. They started to ache. It began dull, but increased in intensity the longer he sat there, stunned into silence.

There was nothing for it. He'd have to discharge whatever this was, somehow. He took much less care about not disturbing his companion now, and as soon as he was on his feet he bolted to the bars, curling two trembling hands around them. Energy was continuing to build, and he winced through the intensifying pain. … But how to get rid of it?

"… Writer…?" Jazz mumbled sleepily, woken by his desperate scrambling. "What's going on?"

The Ghostwriter tried to find his voice, but couldn't. His arms were shaking. He was starting to feel ill. And, perhaps as a stress response, he was breathing. Deeply.

"Are you okay?"

No. He was not okay. He didn't know how to use whatever this energy was, he didn't understand what was happening, he couldn't—

Energy was leaking. It poured from the skin of his hands, curling around them to form a bright aura that latched onto the cell bars and snaked its way all the way through them.

And then there was the burst.

Words in rushed cursive script shot over the metal in both directions, coloured a vivid, gleaming green that burned in unapologetically. Under this pressure the bars warped, bent, and after some brief resistance lost all semblance of structural integrity, exploding into thousands of little pieces.

A shower of metal shavings rained down in the cell. Jazz had had the foresight to duck swiftly under the blankets, which shielded her from the threat of hundreds of little cuts and scratches. The Ghostwriter was not so lucky and got pelted straight in the face by a spray of metal, but ghosts were more durable than living people, and he emerged relatively unscathed. A small cut on the side of his face showed the liquid ectoplasm that flowed just beneath his skin.

The bars, suffice to say, were well and truly gone.

As the throbbing ache subsided, Jazz's small, terrified little breaths could be heard even from underneath the covers. But all he could do was stare at the gap he'd created by obliterating metal with a power he never should have had. The swirling, sparking energy inside of him wasn't done yet, either — merely, it had settled into a form that was just tolerable. For now.

When he spoke, his voice was meek. "What just happened?" he asked the universe. It offered no clarification.

Jazz's head peeped out from the blankets. Little clumps of metal filings tumbled from the woven fabric. "… That wasn't normal, was it?" she asked.

He would have swallowed, if he could. "No," he said. "Not even slightly."

And now his mind was doing overtime, trying to get to the bottom of this strange new power. Perhaps it had something to do with the surrounding environment? Perhaps there was something odd to do with this dimension? There were stranger explanations out there, after all. On the other hand, could it perhaps be an evolution of his current powers brought on from stress and necessity?

… But that just didn't seem right. He'd always thought he was over developing new powers. With his keyboard functioning normally he was more powerful than he sometimes cared to acknowledge, and unlike many others, he hadn't so much _developed _his powers as discovered they were available all along. This power was wrong. Everything about it was—

Wait.

There was one thing that could have reasonably done this, just one. And the Sorceress had stuffed it into her bag before taking them to this godforsaken prison. If she'd kept it with her, if he was right about this hunch, then that meant that something had occurred without his knowledge, likely while he and Jazz were asleep.

The realisation hit slowly, like the revelation that you were being diagnosed with cancer. He'd touched the Script of Cause and Effect, and he hadn't even known it. All in his sleep. And between then and now it had had time to stew away in his very core, probably having fermented there for hours. Maybe even a day, if he was only beginning to show symptoms now.

The Ghostwriter shook with something between horror and rage. It was hard to predict the effect this one would have upon the individual. It all depended on what their own powers and abilities were in the first place. It was something to be used on disposable soldiers, to make them willing and able to perform terrifying feats at the risk of burning themselves up in the process. If it continued like this, he would be compelled to discharge power like that again and again and again, until there wasn't anything left. And with uncontrollable bursts of power like that, one might never be able to reform ever again.

"… Writer?" asked Jazz, hesitating. Her voice was high, higher than how he'd heard her speak at any point before. Was he frightening her? He hadn't been thinking about how he was acting, he was too caught up in…

"I-it…" he began, shakily, taking yet more deep breaths in a paltry attempt to calm himself. "I just… no, it's fine. I'm okay."

"But it wasn't right, was it? You said yourself that wasn't normal!"

The urgent look she was giving him caused a twang of guilt. He winced, and turned back to the destroyed bars. "I think I know what happened, but I'll explain later. This looks like it might be our only opportunity for escape."

She poked her head further out of the covers, folding them back until they fell into a pile in her lap. "What happens if we get caught?!"

"She won't kill you," he said, confidently. "You're an experiment to her. … And I don't think she'll kill me, either. Nothing to lose."

"You seem to be making a lot of assumptions!"

"I know, but this might really be our only shot. You want your brother back, don't you?"

A terrified pause. But she nodded desperately after only a moment.

She was right, though. He _was _making a lot of assumptions — too many of them, in fact. He could see it coming already that the Sorceress might have banked on this strange ability all along. Any ghost with the misfortune to come into contact with that script could easily have developed a power destructive enough to break out of a cell, so predicting and betting on that happening wasn't too much a stretch of the imagination.

That meant the real test was whatever awaited them outside.

Jazz climbed out of her nest, still looking somewhat groggy from the sudden wake-up. She'd just have to cope, because they just couldn't risk staying around here with the bars broken open. Although the Sorceress had only returned thus far to deliver meals, and although "breakfast" had already been served, it still wasn't a risk that could be taken. The ancient ghost had already demonstrated an ability to form telepathic links, and it was impossible to tell over what distance she could manage them.

"Where are we going to go?" Jazz asked, appearing behind him. "… What are we going to do once we get outside?"

"I'm sorry Jasmine, I don't know. We'll have to play it by ear."

As the Ghostwriter squeezed his way through the tight gap, a small amount of leftover metal bar crumbled and fluttered to the floor, glinting along the way. Jazz followed him through without too much trouble herself, and they both looked down the long corridor for the first time. Other cells adorned the hall, all of them seemingly empty. Not a noise had been heard since the time they arrived, so they must surely have been the only residents.

"Keep your voice down," he instructed, quietly. "But how are you feeling?"

She didn't offer immediate response. He took her firmly by the hand and started heading down the corridor, towards the stairway at the end of this place. Her eyes darted about quickly from room to room, searching for even the slightest trace of life, finding nothing.

"I don't know…" she replied, finally. "I know we have to get out of here, but… what's on the outside? If it really is another dimension, then what do we do? What if there's just… _nothing_?"

He hadn't the faintest clue how to answer her. They continued onwards.

"And what about that weird power you used? Were you even in control of that?" she hissed.

Answering truthfully probably wasn't going to help the poor girl's mental state. He gritted his teeth back, trying to think. "Well… no, not then," he said, carefully. "It might be okay now, though. Sometimes powers are like that. The first time they appear it's spontaneous and startling, but you get a handle on them later."

He didn't look back to see if she seemed satisfied with his answer. He just kept walking.

"… What actually happened, though?" she continued to pry. "There were words on the bars, I didn't get to see what they were, though."

"I didn't get to see them, either," he admitted. "Vision was a mess. It was too overwhelming."

She sighed. "Oh…"

When they got to the stairs, it didn't take long to notice how strange they were. Though they seemed straightforward enough from the outside, one's perspective would change on the way up. The stair line twisted slowly onto the walls and eventually onto the ceiling, gravity following suit. By the time they'd climbed to what was arguably not exactly the second floor, the Ghostwriter was no longer sure which way was supposed to be up, and wondered vaguely if it was made by a four-dimensional architect with a fondness for substance abuse.

The next floor presented another set of stairs on the other side of the hall, with another long line of cells. But here there was also a suspicious-looking wooden door in the centre of the hallway, closed tightly and barred shut from the inside. A light hung above it, blinking and sparking, casting slivers of light through the bars of the cells.

Jazz was quiet. The Ghostwriter found himself checking back with her to make sure she was okay, but she was apparently stunned into silence, staring forward with a steady gaze.

"We've got to keep moving," he offered, as kindly as he could. "Come on."

"But what about my parents?" she breathed. Her hand tensed around his as she said it. "They're locked up on the next floor, aren't they?"

He tried to disguise his utter distaste for the pair of humans who had brought her into this world, and wondered if he'd come even close to hiding that sentiment from this all-seeing enthusiast of psychology. "… What are they going to do to me if we rescue them?" he asked, carefully.

Jazz couldn't answer that. Not exactly unexpected, of course — he knew as well as she did that her mother would be quite happy to tear him apart to see how he worked. But empathy tugged at his mind, because if no one tried to save them, the Fentons would likely be trapped in this place for what could be the rest of their lives. There was only one decision that was truly right, here, even if it put his own wellbeing and sanity at risk.

"We'll have to be quick," he declared. "And if they don't comply, we'll have to force them. They won't like it."

Jazz nodded desperately. "Please, anything you have to do. Maybe they'll come around eventually."

The Ghostwriter tried not to laugh. Jazz's father might have been easier to convince, but her mother was truly something else — calling her a dogmatic extremist probably wasn't all that far off the money. A small gesture like saving her life or breaking her out of a prison probably wasn't going to change her mind.

They started for the other side of the hall, slinking past the empty cells. There was a certain eeriness to this. He kept expecting to see someone, somewhere, but there was nothing. They must have been the only people the Sorceress had cared to capture.

… Perhaps the best course of action was to just ignore it outright. It could mean her quest — whatever it was — was still young, and that she hadn't needed to collect vast amounts of prisoners yet. That was the most hopeful idea.

They climbed the second set of stairs. Again, the dimensions twisted as they went. Had he been human the Ghostwriter imagined all of this might have started to make him sick, but Jazz seemed mostly unaffected. In fact, he was a little startled at how she was taking this with such little comment. Was she now so used to the bizarre that strange things like warped dimensions didn't even warrant a second thought?

Another row of cells stood before them on the second floor, but at the end of the corridor there was no third set of stairs. This was it. They started forward, until finally they came to the only inhabited cell. Jazz skipped ahead and peered inside.

Maddie and Jack Fenton slept, but even asleep they seemed tense. Jazz eyed them for a couple of seconds before looking back up to the Ghostwriter for guidance.

"I'll have to try using that power again…" he muttered. "This time will be better, I think."

"I hope you're right," said Jazz, backing away. It was certainly a sensible response.

He took a moment to think things through, and finally decided to pull off his coat. "Take this," he instructed. "Shield yourself, just in case."

Jazz took the item of clothing as if it were a treasured object, fumbled with it, and finally ended up with it over her head as if she was trying to dress up as a purple bed sheet ghost. The Ghostwriter suppressed a chuckle and a grin, which were far from appropriate for the situation, and let his eyes fall back to the bars.

"Right," he breathed. "Once this is done, you need to go in there, wake them up, use whatever method you think will be best to get them to assess the situation sensibly, and then we all get out of here as fast as we can. Ready?"

Jazz nodded, moving the coat in an awkward manner to get her point across. One sleeve was draped over the top, and the writer wasn't quite sure how it had gotten there.

"Ready," she said, voice muffled. "Let's do this."

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note:<br>**I spent so much time just messing with this chapter. It's been hard to pull words out of my brain, lately. But, it's also about time I declare this bit done and dusted.

**Next Up:  
><strong>Chapter 15: Amongst the Midnight Swirls


	15. Amongst the Midnight Swirls

**Author's Note:  
><strong>Welcome to the beginning of the end. Although the end may still be further away than I think…

Had a sudden urge to switch to first person, even though obviously, we're like more than halfway through the story and _I can't do that_. Oh well.

So you know, much of this chapter was written while I was whacked out on progressively more powerful painkillers. We started on paracetamol, advanced to ibuprofen, went up to codeine (addictive analgesic opioid which can make you trip), and nearly ended on endone (an extremely powerful last-resort painkiller narcotic that is usually given after invasive surgery. When my friend took it, she started hallucinating). You could say my life has been FUN, and that I've definitely missed some work. :(

So yeah, if this starts getting weird, you know why.

* * *

><p><strong>Layman Scripts<br>**A fanfic by Pseudinymous

~ 15 ~  
>- <em>Amongst the Midnight Swirls<em> -

* * *

><p>It hadn't gone as well as Jazz had hoped. But she realised, with a dull throng in her heart, that it was about as well as could have been expected.<p>

She'd woken Jack first; he was usually softer on his children and easier to manipulate. But the man just wasn't a quiet person, and he woke up with a confused snort before thrusting himself to a standing position in little under five seconds.

The ghost hunter immediately cast his gaze straight past her and to the one standing beyond the broken bars. "That ghost is back!" he bellowed, in spite of Jazz's best efforts to begin explaining the situation. "Hey, Mads! _Mads_!"

Jazz looked to the Ghostwriter desperately as Maddie's eyes fluttered open. "_Do something_!" she hissed.

The swirling energy he had gained from that damned script still burned within him, urging him to use it for something, anything. Even after destroying two sets of bars it apparently wasn't satisfied, tingling and crackling internally in his fingers. It wanted so desperately to be used that he couldn't ignore an opportunity to do so.

And so, he did.

He laid his hands gently against the floor, and from them the words ran free. Bright green and glowing, they slithered across the ground before picking up pace as they passed through the gaps between bars, racing towards their targets. Jack bounded out of the way but soon found his back arched up against a very solid brick wall, while Maddie was still too disoriented from waking to even try to avoid them. The words crept onto their skin, wrapping around exposed feet and sliding onto their shins, where they finally settled.

Jack moved his mouth, but nothing happened. Suddenly, he seemed unable to speak. Maddie joined in on this great discovery not too much later with plenty of frustrated, angry, and terrified gestures, while the Ghostwriter tried his very best to remain serious and _not _grin ear-to-ear.

"There," he said, his expression forcefully blank. "Now you have to actually _listen _to us."

Maddie's mouth contorted into something that suggested some most vulgar language, but no sound would dare escape her lips. Her daughter cast a most hesitant, worried glance over both of her frantic parents, eyes fixed on them as they continually tried to speak. "You, uh, can reverse this, can't you?" she asked the writer.

Well, considering he had to keep a mental handle on things in order to keep the words where they were, that was a yes. "It's a sustained power. It'll just dissipate when I stop putting energy into it."

And that was another benefit — as long as he continued to use it mildly, the energy buildup for now remained at a more stable, comfortable level. Gone was the urge to use this power on anything,_ anything_, for any reason. Maybe this was how he could balance it out, at least until he could get to his keyboard and change it manually. After all, only his keyboard had ever shown the ability to affect _him_. He'd tried writing on himself before, but he was mostly immune to his own power. It had to be the reality around him that changed, rather than anything else. Although, the ability to affect anything about an object or person, physical or otherwise… that was a significant upgrade. Previously it was just minds, personalities, consciousness, that he could affect by writing on people. Maybe he would be able to write upon himself now, and find some way to shut this down to a more tolerable level.

Just… not quite yet. For now, it was too useful.

Maddie made some more emphatic waving motions that were far from friendly. She was also quickly advancing towards the bars, staring him down as a lion might before it was to devour its prey. But he was just so much more _powerful_ than her, with this new talent. Even more so than before.

"So, we're escaping," he explained in deadpan to her face, with a quick gesture towards the stairs. "I _am _sorry for silencing you, but we don't have the luxury of arguing at the moment."

Jazz gave a mad nod of agreement, pleading with her parents. "Please, come on," she urged, her voice low. "I know you don't like him, but if we don't do something and we don't do it quietly, we might be stuck in here forever, or _worse_."

Maddie's face scrunched up into an ugly display of hatred and loathing, apparently feeling as if she had been blackmailed within an inch of her life. But, almost surprisingly, she went with it. _Finally_, she went with it_. _One leg after another, she climbed through the hole in the bars, though her shocking expression never improved. Jack followed along afterwards, looking a strange combination of nervous and brave.

"There's a door out of this place on the floor below," said the writer, as Jazz climbed back out of the cell. "I think it might be the only normal way out. I'm not sure what's on the other side, so just… be ready."

"None of us are armed…" Jazz reminded him. However, the Ghostwriter paid her little mind, and neglected to mention that, considering the company, that might actually be a very good thing — at least for his own safety, if nothing else.

She caught up and took the lead with him, her parents in tow behind. They walked through the prison corridor, down the strangely twisted set of stairs, and to the only door they had seen. Jack looked somewhat ill from the twisted dimensions, but Maddie was taking them just as well as her daughter had. They came to a halt here, and the Ghostwriter turned to face them.

He wasn't happy about this, but it made sense to him. Unfortunately.

"Can we at least agree that we're all in this together at least until we get out of here, and that arguing amongst each other could hold us up or get us caught?" he asked them. "If you can agree to that, I'll let you speak again. You may need to call for help, or warn others of danger — depending on where this door leads."

Jack nodded desperately, almost as soon as the words had come out of the ghost's mouth. Maddie nodded too, but in such a subtle way that an unskilled observer would have missed it — and it still had to contest with a straight-up scowl. But it was enough. He decided to risk it.

The energy dissipated. His fingers twitched at the chill of its absence, before starting to warm again, teasing the edges of his mind.

"Thank _God_," Maddie breathed, as if her respiratory system had been shut down the entire time. "Let's get this over with."

"An excellent idea," said the writer, turning on his heel and reaching for the door handle. "Let me lead. Without weapons, you may be relatively defenceless."

To his mild surprise, there were no complaints. So he unlocked the door and pulled it open.

A torrent of cool air rushed in, thick and sticky as if made from vaporised molasses. The Ghostwriter took one accidental breath and regretted the decision in an instant, as it liquified on the insides of his throat and lungs. An involuntary reaction forced him to cough, and a little cloud of green mist rose in front of his face, slowly dissolving into the air around them.

But this was only one small facet of the reality unfolding before his eyes. He'd seen this place before — albeit in illustrations, and never photographs. Never had he envisioned it as another dimension, but perhaps, when he thought about the woefully inadequate descriptions his books had provided, it truly was. Solid ground stretched from here to infinity, twisting upwards and to the side, depending on where you trained your eyes. It was purple and green and somewhere between a solid and a liquid, like a gel that might change states at the slightest provocation. The skies swirled with it in a complicated dance above and below, in deep midnight blue.

The landscape offered more than that, however; it was dotted with great twisted shadows of trees. In amongst them one was truly standout — enormous and blackened, and almost certainly dead. It twirled and twisted from the horrifying physics like a corkscrew, its top pulled over and buried back into the ground. It didn't seem that far away, but it tricked the eyes, and depending on where you focused, it sometimes seemed instead a great length into the distance.

"We're in the Ghost Zone…?" Jack hazarded.

Had the Ghostwriter been able to breathe comfortably he would have laughed at such an ignorant statement. "Not exactly," he said, exhaling only a little in order to avoid choking on the horrible air as he spoke. "I think it's…" he continued, but found himself stopping yet again to cough. "_Connected_ to the Ghost Zone. The… Abyss."

He went to take one step out into the strange dimension, but was stopped by Jazz tugging at his arm. "Are you all right?" she asked, apparently fearful.

"Something in the air here… not good… for ghosts…" he managed, starting to sound wheezy. "Not going to speak… unless I have to…"

Maddie's face remained steely, unaffected by this display of weakness.

"But you're going to be okay if you don't breathe it in, right?" Jazz continued, a little more desperately. "Er- don't speak, just nod!"

He nodded, obediently, and looked back out into the landscape beyond. His lungs felt better immediately as he stopped drawing breath to speak, and with a few more little coughs, everything seemed to be dislodged and in order again. Perhaps this wasn't going to be so bad. Although, he had to wonder why humans, of all creatures, didn't seem at all affected by the unpleasant atmospheric conditions.

First foot out into the Abyss. The ground squelched angrily, but that wasn't of great concern; the sensation of gravity was incredibly strong, here, and as he dragged the rest of himself out the door, his head bizarrely felt too light. It wasn't something that would be impossible to work with, but it _was _terribly disorienting. Normality returned as he let his own centre of gravity take the steering wheel instead, regulating the conflicting forces. But he could still feel his nerves telling him about them, suggesting both upwards and downwards pull, even as his feet began to leave the ground.

"Well, what are you waiting for?" Maddie asked impatiently, trying to get around him as he blocked the door. "I thought we were escaping, ghost."

He took a breath, and coughed again. "This will be unpleasant for you."

"_Unpleasant_?"

"Gravity's a mess here, all over the place. Strong downwards pull at my feet, but an upwards pull at my head."

Jack looked _thrilled_ at the idea. His stomach hadn't even taken the stairs with particular grace, and his grovelling wasn't well hidden either. The Ghostwriter flew forward to allow free passage, finding pockets of gravity changing quickly.

"Follow me… single file," he commanded, with an unfortunate wheeze. "… Don't misstep."

Jazz moaned as she stepped into the downwards pocket. "Where are we going? How are we supposed to get out of here? Nothing looks right…"

But the Ghostwriter pointed over to the great ancient deadened plant. "See that? If the books are right, you can find the exit from there."

"And what does it exit into?" Maddie demanded.

"… The Ghost Zone!" he choked back. "Okay, Gods, I'm not speaking anymore."

And so they walked. Maddie and Jazz followed him with very exact, precise steps, as he tested the fluctuations of gravity ahead of them. But Jack's form was significantly wider than either his wife or his daughter's, and he was doing his absolute best to make himself as thin as physically possible. Unfortunately, it turned out a lot of this wideness was a decent amount of muscle, and making himself even slightly smaller wasn't an easy option. The spectacle might have been humorous had they not been carefully navigating a landscape where 'up' was subjective and 'down' wasn't always exactly the direction of the ground. The Ghostwriter's human followers were all a little green around the edges as they plodded through it.

Halfway to the corkscrew-shaped tree (or so it appeared — sometimes it would spontaneously jump to the eye, getting closer or further away), the Ghostwriter stopped dead. Jazz walked straight into him and then jumped backwards, although her parents maintained enough distance not to get knocked back by her.

He held his hand out carefully, and peered back at them over his shoulder. "This region…" he breathed, carefully, "is very dangerous."

"Looks normal enough to me," Jack pitched in, but the Ghostwriter shook his head.

"The gravity's unusually strong. You'd be crushed… as if you were an ant, and someone stepped on you."

After this explanation, there was no argument when they went around the long way instead.

It took what might have been half an hour to finally reach the tree, and it looked far different and far more impressive from what it had in the distance.

Its corkscrew shape had twisted further. Now it had become a tightly-wound coil, like a slinky, something that a child might push down a flight of stairs in a poor, desperate attempt to entertain itself. Branches span out in idiosyncratic fashion, appearing and disappearing from the eye as if they had woven themselves in and out of other dimensions that weren't even closely related to this one.

… The air was easier to draw here, too. The Ghostwriter's lungs were starting to unstick.

"Well? Can't you see the exit?" Maddie demanded. He tried not to glare at her tone, he really did, but he was well past the point where he could look at her and not feel anger. "Don't give me that look!" she continued.

"Then stop chastising the only person capable of helping you," the Ghostwriter warned. "I could have left you in that prison. It was _so_ tempting. I'm only doing this because it's right."

_No, you're only doing this because of her_, his mind teased. _Don't kid yourself._

But Jack pushed his way into the conversation before it could go totally off the rails, wincing at the idea of coming in between the two. "… Maybe we should leave and deal with the rest of this later?" he suggested.

Jazz nodded madly in agreement. "Dad's right! We can't just stay here arguing. We don't have time to waste on that!"

At first the Ghostwriter was sure Jazz had directed this at Maddie, but he soon realised that she was actually staring at _him_. … But, perhaps she was right. Perhaps at this point he'd just gotten so agitated and frustrated with Jazz's mother that he could no longer stop himself from biting back, even at the most minor offence. It wasn't something that was going to help any of them.

… Sometimes it was like he couldn't help himself. His own vindictiveness was trying to sabotage him, yet again.

All right. Okay. Time to think about constructive things, and only constructive things. He pinwheeled around to look at what could have been considered sky from the base of this ruined, deadened tree, trying to spot something that looked like a way out. He was searching for a glint of ectoplasm, something green and something that looked like it might be the open jaws of this place. But illustrations were scant preparation for actually trying to see through a dimension that didn't even obey its own laws of physics, let alone anyone else's…

He tried a different direction. What lay beyond that was a strange five-way junction, paths leading up and down and to who knew where. One was cloaked in shadow, almost entirely misted over with some sort of thickened, vaporised mass. He squinted his eyes carefully at it, trying to see if there was anything in there. They came upon a light.

It was small, round, and glowed resolutely against the mist. Pure white against the black, but difficult to see nonetheless, as if it were being swallowed up by the darkness that surrounded it. It was suspended just above the ground, floating as if unsure of its own levitation, as if somewhere in there it had a mind all of its own.

"… We're not going that way, are we?" Jazz hesitated, snapping him from his thoughts.

But he felt drawn to it. Something about it felt warm, inviting, in a way he wasn't sure he could articulate. He took a step forward, but seemed to stop himself.

"Hey… Writer! What's wrong? _What are you doing_?"

"I…" he began, but his words trailed off and then he stopped speaking altogether. The power unwillingly, uncomfortably bestowed upon him was still swirling around inside, threatening to leak out, but it was as if that little light was reacting with that, using that power to draw him towards it, in almost magnetic fashion. Indeed, just staring at it seemed to soothe that insistent ache, and even one step closer towards it he started to feel more in control — as if it was _his own _power, not something falsely thrust upon him by an ancient script.

"_You're scaring me_!" Jazz finally exclaimed, jumping forwards to grab his arm, dragging him unwillingly back towards the tree. "I don't think that's the way out! Do you?!"

He stole his eyes away from the shadows, and back towards the three very vulnerable humans in his company. "… The light…" he mumbled. "You can't see that?"

Jazz shook her head. "I don't know what you're talking about… whatever you're seeing isn't even showing up on these lenses, Writer. And they're _made _to see invisible things."

He wanted to look back. He could feel the cool warmth of the light even at a distance like this, and it was still there. Waiting for him. Calling to him.

"I think its in your head," she told the writer, voice wavering. "It could be anything, please don't follow it."

He reached a hand up to his face, rubbing his eyes, and then stepped backwards again towards the tree. "You're right. Sorry. Something about it is… never mind."

Jazz exhaled, audibly. Jack did too, but Maddie remained tense enough to shatter her own ribs.

"So… the way out?" Jack suggested.

Even though he had looked away, the light was clawing desperately at him, as if it were a friend slowly falling from a cliff. And now that godforsaken energy was swirling angrily inside again, reminding him of just who the hell was in charge, and burning brightly at the tips of his fingers as it struggled to find a use for itself.

But this time when he looked to the skies, he saw the exit.

Perhaps it had been the different angling that made it clearer this time, or perhaps a new wave of determination had swept through him as he felt the script try to lead him to his own self-destruction. A pinprick of ghostly glow, swirled around almost endlessly by the ground of the twisted dimension, led to what was most likely the exit. All they had to do was follow it, and then they'd safely fall into the hands of the Observants.

They could explain things, maybe even ask for help. Although, knowing the Observants of the Order, there probably wasn't going to be help without a lot of questions.

But at least, getting there should be simple — one foot in front of the other was all it would take. All they had to do was stop themselves from getting sidetracked and avoid any temptation to slow down. He began to move ahead. "This way," he commanded, pointing towards the coiled path. "It'll lead out into the Ghost Zone. We don't have to worry about gravity fluctuations, there."

"We only have to worry about the fact that there's no ground, and it's possible to fall forever," Jazz added, concerned. "There's three of us and only one of you."

"There's help on the outside…" he muttered.

"… What kind of help?" asked Jack. "Other ghosts?"

"Of a kind… we call them Observants."

"And what do Observants do?"

"Well, _usually_, they observe."

Jack paused, face scrunched up in thought. "And when they don't?"

The Ghostwriter sighed, realising that a full explanation was going to be in order whether he could be bothered giving it or not. "They control aspects of the time stream," he began, matter-of-factly. "Both your world and mine. As far as I'm told, they help everything run smoothly."

Maddie plodded along directly after him this time, almost bounding to keep up with his quickening pace. His hands quivered as he walked.

"_Ghosts _control the time stream?!"

"You find that surprising?" he asked, gazing back at the woman from over his shoulder. "Nature always favours entropy, but power comes in many forms, and consciousness likes order. The Observants understand the time stream from their own point of reference and have, at least in the past, adjusted it."

Now she was nearly shaking. "How do you know so much about this? Are you sure?"

"It's semi-common knowledge," he told her, with a shrug. "I suppose you find the idea uncomfortable."

"_Yes,_ I find the idea that ghosts can control our lives uncomfortable," Maddie explained. "You make them sound like…" and she stopped herself there, collecting her thoughts. "Being able to adjust the time stream? That's… the power of a god, not a ghost."

"They're not gods," he continued. "But they were also never human. Sometimes they even fade away, but there's always more of them. They reproduce by replicating, like cells. They're also a lot more organised than… _gods_. They have rules and sanctions on what can and cannot be done. They're painful to deal with, too, but they work for the common good. You're alive today because of them."

Silence. The Ghostwriter found himself looking back again, to double-check she was still there.

Well, if she wasn't going to continue this, that was just fine with him. He crossed his arms, looked back ahead, and continued forward.

"But the Observants aren't really in charge, are they?" Jazz hesitated, and he deflated a little at having to continue the conversation. If it were only her, he would have been glad to continue it all day. But with her family…

"Then what on earth _is _in charge?" asked Maddie, who had remembered she had a voice, again.

"The Guardian of Time… he is known as Clockwork." More silence. Maybe it wouldn't be too bad an idea to fill it. There didn't seem to be too much bickering anymore, and he was gaining confidence that they were going to make it out of here in-tact. "He can see everything that was and everything that will ever be, not just in our own timeline but _all possible timelines_. He guides the time stream such that absolute disaster should not be possible. Nudges things. Nudges _people_. Records of his existence go back to the very beginning — even then, there were stories passed down through generations before."

"Now that sounds like a ghost off-the-charts powerful," Jack piped up, obviously less concerned about the information being revealed to him than his wife. "Like nothing we've ever seen!"

"Well, you've met the Sorcerer… er, Sorceress," the Ghostwriter told him. "She has hundreds of abilities thanks to that… that _magic_ she uses. So I wouldn't put too much money on her losing in a fight."

"Are you suggesting that the Sorceress could possibly have _even more power than Clockwork_?" Jazz stammered. "That's — but _how_? He's literally, I don't know, like a concept! … Like a god."

"That though it may be," he warned, "It took an army of Ancients to stop her during the Great War. One of those Ancients, surely, was Clockwork. I think it was the only time he had gotten so directly involved with anything. The Ghost Zone was on the brink of destruction, a time of extremely violent rebellion — all thanks to her. I don't envy anyone who lived it."

"How can she possibly be that strong? It doesn't even make any sense." Maddie scoffed. "Ghosts only have specific powers. Not hundreds of them. And certainly not _magic_."

"But one power can look like many more," the Ghostwriter warned. "To be honest, no one seems too sure of how she ever became so powerful. So I am told, her original ability was to channel energy from almost anything, ectoplasmic or otherwise. How that turned into magic and sorcery… we might never know. Using magic as an alternative to ectoplasmic power is unfathomable, mainly because it's… frankly, not supposed to exist. And yet she does it."

They continued to plod through the twisted dimension. It curled around itself, but the pinprick of green was getting larger now, closer, as if resisting the awkward twisting of the Abyss. Gravity was starting to become more consistent with the ground, with fewer large fluctuations, and the Ghostwriter found himself needing to guide where they stood less and less. No longer were there detours — they could walk safely in a 'straight' line.

Part of him was starting to become suspicious, however. Perhaps they should have been intercepted by the Sorceress at some point? Unless she just didn't know about any of this after all, but that was a suspicious notion in and of itself. Maybe she could only read minds and see events from a short distance, at least for now? After all, she certainly didn't seem like she was back to full power. On the other hand, wouldn't it be simple for someone who lived in this dimension to track the path of this escape and stop them in their tracks?

And why imprison them in the Abyss, of all places? Surely, a prison in a dimension with no exit into a common dimension would be the most sensible option. _Surely_, intentionally inflicting a power on someone that would make that escape possible wasn't a logical course of action, either…

The Ghostwriter gave up. He had no idea what any of this was about, and he certainly didn't understand her goals. Perhaps in the end she _wasn't _lying. Maybe the history books _were _wrong. But then, what on earth was she doing with the Phantom boy? What was she going to use the power she sourced from him for?

_Could _there be a truly good use for that power? Not that he agreed with it, not at all, but…

"Well, now that she's _back_, why isn't this Clockwork fellow getting involved now?" asked Jack, rubbing the back of his head. "Wouldn't he know?"

The Ghostwriter sighed. "I'm sure he does know. But if only a few are truly in danger, he will not act. We might not be… important enough. It might be our fate to confront her ourselves. Or maybe she will ignore us in the end. … I don't know. I'm sorry. I wish I did."

"… Oh…" said Jazz.

They kept walking. They were nearly at the rim, now — or so it seemed.

"Wait…" Jazz managed, "Is the portal door still fixed and closed shut?"

The sound of footfalls came to an abrupt halt. Maddie had stopped dead in her tracks, staring endlessly out into the Ghost Zone beyond the Abyss.

"… Mum?"

"_Shit_!" Maddie Fenton yelled. "I sealed it after that Mirabella came through! How are we supposed to get back out?!"

The Ghostwriter looked at her and then down at his palms. "Exactly how impenetrable is it to ghost power?"

Jack frowned. "We had to build it to withstand the worst there is. After Amity Park got invaded several times, we reinforced it to resist… anything ectoplasmic-based."

"… Well, that's just awesome…" said Jazz, deflating as she walked.

_Yes, absolutely wonderful,_ thought the Ghostwriter. _Now I'm going to have to drag them all back to my library for shelter, hope to the heavens above that this new power is capable of warding the place against the Sorceress of all people, hope against hope that nothing is already waiting for us to get there, and then I have to house and look after them _as well_ until I can get the keyboard fixed. With only oranges. … And death_ _stares._

… '_Just awesome', as you put it Jasmine._

Her gaze snapped to him, and even though he was not facing her he could feel it upon his back.

_Thank-you_ she said, except that it might have been all in his head. _For everything you've done. You're a better person than you think you are_.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note:<br>**First of all, (pleaseforgivemethiswasmeanttobedoneatleastamonthagoI'msorryChristmasandmentalhealthgotintheway).

Anyway, thanks for reading, as always! I don't have much else to say about this chapter, although I _will _say that I am very much looking forward to doing the next one, as well as Interlude III, which comes after it. Lots of Randy, Mira, and… Technus.

Who am I kidding, you're about to watch this descend into utter chaos, and I'm going to enjoy every minute of it.

-Sudo


End file.
